GIFT   OF 
MICHAEL  REESE 


AMERICANISMS 
AND    BRITICISMS 

WITH  OTHER  ESS  A  YS 
ON  OTHER   ISMS 

BY 
BRANDER   MATTHEWS 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER   AND    BROTHERS 


Copyright,  1892,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


TO 

THOMAS  R.  LOUNSBURY 
YALE  UNIVERSITY 

My  dear  Lmmsbury* — In  reading  over  the  proof-sheets 
of  tkese  pages,  I  have  happened  on  your  name  more  often 
than  1  thought  I  had  -written  it,  and  yet  not  so  often  by 
once  as  I  wish  to  write  it.  So  I  set  it  here,  in  the  fore 
front  of  this  little  book,  to  bear  -witness  that  much  of -what 
may  be  good  in  these  essaylets  of  mine  is  dtie  to  help  given 
by  you,  either  directly  by  -word  of  mouth  or  indirectly  by 
the  printed  page.  A  nd  that  is  why  I  take  pleasure  now 
in  subscribing  myself  as 

Yours  gratefully, 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

Columbia  College 

September,  1892 


CONTENTS 


Page 
AMERICANISMS  AND    BRITICISMS  ....          I 

AS  TO  "AMERICAN  SPELLING"  ....     32 

THE    LITERARY     INDEPENDENCE     OF    THE 

UNITED     STATES Co 

THE  CENTENARY  OF  FENIMORE  COOPER  .  89 
IGNORANCE  AND  INSULARITY  .  .  .  .103 
THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS  .  .  .  .114 
THREE  AMERICAN  ESSAYISTS 135 

DISSOLVING    VIEWS  : 

I.    OF  MARK  TWAIN'S  BEST  STORY.       .     151 
II.    OF  A    NOVEL    OF    M.   ZOLA'S     .       .  l6l 

in.  OF  WOMEN'S  NOVELS 169 

IV.    OF   TWO    LATTERDAY   HUMORISTS     .     177 


AMERICANISMS  AND   BRITICISMS 


a  novel  written  in  the  last 
decade  but  one  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  by  an  Aus 
tralian  lady  in  collaboration 
with  a  member  of  Parlia 
ment,  one  of  the  characters  stops  another 
"  to  ask  for  the  explanation  of  this  or  that 
Australian  phrase,"  wondering  whether 
"  it  would  be  better  to  give  the  English 
meaning  of  each  word  after  the  word 
itself,  and  to  keep  on  repeating  it  all 
through,  or  would  it  do  to  put  a  foot 
note  once  for  all,  or  how  would  it  do  to 
have  a  little  glossary  at  the  end  ?"  As  it 
happens,  oddly  enough,  the  authors  of 
The  Ladies  Gallery  have  not  themselves 
done  any  one  of  these  things  ;  and  there 
fore,  if  we  chance  to  read  their  fiction, 
we  are  left  to  grope  for  ourselves  when 
in  the  first  two  chapters  we  are  told  of 
"  the  wild  howling  of  the  dingoes  in  the 


scrub"  and  when  we  learn  that  the  hero 
had  "eaten  his  evening  meal  —  damper 
and  a  hard  junk  of  wallabt  flesh  " — while 
his  "  billy  of  tea  was  warming."  Then  we 
are  informed  that  "  he  had  arranged  a 
bed  with  his  blankets,  his  swag  for  a  pil 
low,"  and  that  he  wished  for  a  good  mate 
to  share  his  watch,  or  even  "  a  black 
tracker  upon  whom  he  could  depend  as  a 
scout."  We  are  told  also  that  this  hero, 
who  "was  not  intended  to  grub  along," 
hears  a  call  in  the  night,  and  he  reflects 
"  that  a  black  fellow  would  not  cou-ee  in 
that  way."  Later  he  cuts  up  "  &fig  of  to 
bacco  ;"  he  says  "we  can_y«r;z  now;"  he 
speaks  of  living  on  wild  plums  and  bandi 
coot  ;"  and  he  makes  mention  of  "a  cer 
tain  newchum"  From  the  context  we 
may  fairly  infer  that  this  last  term  is  the 
Australian  equivalent  of  the  Western  ten 
derfoot ;  but  who  shall  explain  the  mean 
ing  of  damper  and  dingoes,  cou-ee  and  ban 
dicoot?  And  why  have  scrub  and  billy, 
grub  andy^,  taken  on  new  meanings,  as 
though  they  had  suffered  a  sea-change  in 
the  long  voyage  around  the  Cape  or 
through  the  canal  ? 

As  yet,  so  far  as  I   know,  no  British 
critic  has  raised  a  cry  of  alarm  against 


the  coming  degradation  of  the  English 
language  by  the  invasion  of  Australian- 
isms.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted,  however, 
that  the  necessities  of  a  new  civilization 
will  force  the  Australian  to  the  making 
of  many  a  new  word  to  define  new  condi 
tions.  As  the  San  Francisco  hoodlum  is 
different  from  the  New  York  loafer,  so 
the  Melbourne  larrikin  has  differentiated 
himself  from  the  London  rough,  and  in 
due  season  a  term  had  to  be  developed 
to  denote  this  differentiation.  There  are 
also  not  a  few  Canadian  phrases  to  be  col 
lected  by  the  curious;  and  the  exiles  in 
India  have  evolved  a  vocabulary  of  their 
own  by  a  frequent  adoption  of  native 
words,  which  makes  difficult  the  reading 
of  certain  of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's  ear 
lier  tales.  To  recall  these  things  is  but 
to  recognize  that  the  same  causes  are  at 
work  in  Canada,  in  India,  and  in  Australia 
as  have  been  acting  in  the  United  States. 
It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  the  British 
critic  will  show  the  same  intolerance  tow 
ards  the  colonial  and  dependent  Austra 
lian  and  Canadian  that  he  has  been  wont 
to  show  towards  the  independent  Amer 
ican.  The  controversy,  when  it  comes,  is 
one  at  which  the  American  will  look  on 


with  disinterested  amusement,  remem 
bering  that  those  laugh  best  who  laugh 
last,  and  that  Dean  Alford  omitted  from 
the  later  editions  of  his  dogmatic  discus 
sion  of  the  Queens  English  a  passage 
which  was  prominent  in  the  first  edition, 
issued  in  1863,  during  the  war  of  the  re 
bellion,  and  which  animadverted  on  the 
process  of  deterioration  that  the  Queen's 
English  had  undergone  at  the  hands  of 
the  Americans.  "  Look  at  those  phrases," 
he  cried,  "which  so  amuse  us  in  their 
speech  and  books,  at  their  reckless  exag 
geration  and  contempt  for  congruity,  and 
then  compare  the  character  and  history 
of  the  nation — its  blunted  sense  of  moral 
obligation  and  duty  to  man,  its  open  dis 
regard  of  conventional  right  where  ag 
grandizement  is  to  be  obtained,  and  I 
may  now  say,  its  reckless  and  fruitless 
maintenance  of  the  most  cruel  and  un 
principled  war  in  the  history  of  the 
world."  Time  can  be  relied  on  to  quash 
an  indictment  against  a  nation,  and  we 
Americans  should  be  sorry  to  think  that 
there  are  to-day  in  England  any  of  those 
who  in  1863  sympathized  with  the  Dean 
of  Canterbury,  and  who  are  not  now  heart 
ily  ashamed  of  their  attitude  then. 


Owing,  it  may  be,  to  the  consciousness 
of  strength,  which  is  a  precious  result  of 
the  war  the  British  clergyman  denounced 
thus  eloquently,  the  last  tie  of  colonial 
ism  which  bound  us  to  the  mother-coun 
try  is  broken.  We  know  now  that  the 
mother-tongue  is  a  heritage  and  not  a 
loan.  It  is  ours  to  use  as  we  needs  must. 
In  America  there  is  no  necessity  to  plead 
for  the  right  of  the  Americanism  to  exist. 
The  cause  is  won.  No  American  writer 
worth  his  salt  would  think  of  withdraw 
ing  a  word  or  of  apologizing  for  a  phrase 
because  it  was  not  current  within  sound 
of  Bow  Bells.  The  most  timid  of  Amer 
ican  authoresses  has  no  doubt  as  to  her 
use  of  railroad,  conductor,  grade,  and  to 
switch,  despite  her  possible  knowledge 
that  in  British  usage  the  equivalents  of 
these  words  are  railway,  guard,  gradient, 
and  to  shunt.  On  the  contrary,  in  fact, 
there  is  visible  now  and  again,  especially 
on  the  part  of  the  most  highly  cultivated 
writers,  an  obvious  delight  in  grasping 
an  indigenous  word  racy  of  the  soil. 
There  is  many  an  American  expression 
of  a  pungent  freshness  which  authors, 
weary  of  an  outworn  vocabulary,  seize 
eagerly.  It  may  be  a  new  word,  but  it 


would  not  be  in  accord  with  our  tradi 
tions  to  refuse  naturalization  to  a  wel 
come  new-comer;  or  it  may  be  a  survival 
flourishing  here  in  our  open  fields,  al 
though  long  since  rooted  out  of  the  trim 
island  garden  on  the  other  side  of  the  At 
lantic,  and  in  such  case  we  use  it  unhes 
itatingly  to-day  as  our  forefathers  used  it 
in  the  past,  "following,"  as  Lowell  re 
marks,  "  the  fashion  of  our  ancestors,  who 
unhappily  could  bring  over  no  English 
better  than  Shakespeare's." 

In  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  of  his 
dictionary,  issued  in  1825,  Noah  Webster 
declared  that  although  in  America  "the 
body  of  the  language  is  the  same  as  in 
England,  and  it  is  desirable  to  perpetuate 
that  sameness,  yet  some  differences  must 
exist,"  since  "  language  is  the  expression 
of  ideas,  and  if  the  people  of  one  country 
cannot  preserve  an  identity  of  ideas" 
with  the  people  of  another  country,  they 
are  not  likely  to  retain  an  absolute  iden 
tity  of  language;  and  Webster  had  no; 
difficulty  in  showing  that  differences  of 
physical  and  political  conditions  had  al 
ready  in  his  day,  only  half  a  century  after 
the  Revolution,  and  when  the  centre  of 
population  was  still  close  to  the  Atlantic 


seaboard,  produced  differences  of  speech. 
It  is  too  much  to  expect,  perhaps,  that 
the  British  critic  shall  look  at  this  Yankee 
independence  from  our  point  of  view. 
Professor  Lounsbury  tells  us  in  his  admi 
rable  biography  that  in  Fenimore  Cooper's 
time  the  attitude  of  the  Englishman  tow 
ards  the  American  "  in  the  most  favorable 
cases  .  .  .  was  supercilious  and  patroniz 
ing,  an  attitude  which  never  permits  the 
nation  criticising  to  understand  the  na 
tion  criticised."  Things  have  changed 
for  the  better  since  Cooper  was  almost 
alone  in  his  stalwart  Americanism,  but 
the  arrogance  which  General  Braddock 
of  his  Majesty's  army  showed  towards 
Colonel  Washington  of  the  Virginia  con 
tingent  survives  here  and  there  in  Great 
Britain,  even  though  another  dean  sits  in 
Dr.  Alford's  stall  in  Canterbury  Cathe 
dral  ;  it  prompted  a  British  novelist  not 
long  ago  to  be  offensively  impertinent  to 
an  American  lady  (Atkenaum,  September 
i,  1888),  and  it  allowed  Lord  Wolseley  to 
insult  the  memory  of  Robert  E.  Lee  with 
ignorant  praise.  It  finds  expression  in  a 
passage  like  the  following  from  a  Primer 
of  English  Composition,  by  Mr.  John  Nich 
ols  :  "Americanisms,  as  'Britisher,'  'ske- 


daddle,'  and  the  peculiar  use  of  '  clever,' 
'calculate/  '  guess,  '  reckon,'  etc.,  with  the 
mongrel  speech  adopted  by  some  humor 
ists,  are  only  admissible  in  satirical  pict 
ures  of  American  manners"  (p.  35). 
When  we  read  an  assertion  of  this  sort, 
we  are  reduced  to  believe  that  it  must  be 
the  dampness  of  the  British  climate  which 
has  thus  rusted  the  hinges  of  British  man 
ners. 

Far  more  often  than  we  could  wish  can 
we  hear  the  note  of  lofty  condescension  in 
British  discussion  of  the  peculiarities  of 
other  races.  When  Englishmen  are  forced 
to  compare  themselves  with  men  of  any 
other  country,  no  doubt  it  must  be  diffi 
cult  for  them  not  to  plume  themselves  on 
their  superior  virtue.  But  modesty  is  also 
a  virtue,  and  if  this  were  more  often  culti 
vated  in  Great  Britain,  the  French,  for 
example,  would  have  fewer  occasions  for 
making  pointed  remarks  about  la  morgue 
britannique.  Even  the  gentle  Thackeray 
— if  the  excursus  may  be  forgiven — is  not 
wholly  free  from  this  failing.  In  spite 
of  his  familiarity  with  French  life  and 
French  art,  he  could  not  quite  divest 
himself  of  his  British  pride,  and  of  the  in 
tolerance  which  accompanies  it,  and  there- 


fore  we  find  him  recording  that  M.  de 
Florae  confided  gayly  to  Mr.  Clive  New- 
come  the  reason  why  he  preferred  the 
coffee  at  the  hotel  to  the  coffee  at  the 
great  cafe  "  with  a  duris  urgens  in  rebus 
egestsas  !  pronounced  in  the  true  French 
manner "  (Newcomes, chapter xxviii.).  But 
how  should  a  Frenchman  pronounce  Lat 
in  ? — like  an  Englishman,  perhaps  ?  When 
even  the  kindly  Thackeray  is  capable  of 
a  sneering  insularity  of  this  sort,  it  is 
small  wonder  that  the  feeling  of  the 
French  towards  the  British  is  well  ex 
pressed  in  the  final  line  of  the  quatrain 
inscribed  over  the  gate  at  Compiegne 
through  which  Joan  Dare  went  to  her 
capture : 

"Tous  ceux-la  d'Albion  n'ont  faict  le  bien  jamais!" 

And  we  are  reminded  of  the  English  lady 
who  was  taken  to  see  Mr.  Jefferson's  per 
formance  of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  and  who 
liked  it  very  much  indeed,  but  thought  it 
such  a  pity  that  the  actor  had  so  strong 
an  American  accent ! 

"  Ignorance  of  his  neighbor  is  the  char 
acter  of  the  typical  John  Bull,"  says  Mr. 
R.  L.  Stevenson,  who  also  declares  that 


"the  Englishman  sits  apart  bursting  with 
pride  and  ignorance."  What  a  Scot  has 
written  a  Yankee  may  quote.  And  the 
quotation  has  pertinence  here  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  in  the  last  century  the  Eng 
lish  were  just  as  keen  against  Scotticisms 
and  Hibernicisms,  and  just  as  bitter,  as 
they  have  been  in  this  century  against 
Americanisms,  and  as  they  may  be  in  the 
next  against  Australianisms.  Macaulay 
asserted  that  there  were  in  Marmion  and 
in  Waver  ley  "  Scotticisms  at  which  a  Lon 
don  apprentice  would  laugh  ;"  and  there 
are  to  be  seen  in  the  English  newspapers 
now  and  again  petty  attacks  on  the  style 
and  vocabulary  of  American  authors  of 
distinction,  which  it  is  perhaps  charita 
ble  to  credit  to  London  apprentices.  One 
of  these  it  was  no  doubt  who  began  a  re 
view  of  Mr.  Brownell'ssubtle  and  profound 
study  of  French  Traits  with  the  state 
ment  that  "  the  language  most  depress 
ing  to  the  educated  Englishman  is  the 
language  of  the  cultured  American." 
Probably  the  small  sword  will  always  be 
exasperating  to  those  who  cling  to  the 
boxing-glove. 

When  a  London  apprentice  laughs  at 
the  Scotticisms  of  the  North  Briton,  and 


when  the  London  Athenceum  is  depressed 
by  the  language  of  cultured  Americans, 
there  is  to  be  discovered  behind  the 
laugh  and  the  scoff  an  assumption  that 
any  departure  from  the  usage  which  ob 
tains  in  London  is  most  deplorable.  The 
laugh  and  the  scoff  are  the  outward  and 
visible  signs  of  an  inward  and  spiritual  be 
lief  that  the  Londoner  is  the  sole  guar 
dian  and  trustee  of  the  English  language. 
But  this  is  a  belief  for  which  there  is  no 
foundation  whatever.  The  English  lan 
guage  is  not  bankrupt  that  it  needs  to 
have  a  receiver  appointed ;  it  is  quite 
capable  of  minding  its  own  business  with 
out  the  care  of  a  committee  of  English 
men.  If  indeed  a  guardian  were  neces 
sary,  what  Englishman  would  it  be  who 
would  best  preserve  our  pure  English — the 
shepherd  of  Dorset  or  the  miner  of  Nor 
thumberland,  the  Yorkshire  man  or  the 
cockney?  If  it  is  not  the  London  ap 
prentice  who  is  to  set  the  standard,  but 
the  Englishman  of  breeding,  it  is  hard  to 
discover  the  ground  whereon  this  Eng 
lishman  can  claim  superiority  of  taste  or 
knowledge  over  the  other  educated  men 
to  whom  English  is  the  mother-tongue, 
whether  they  were  born  in  Scotland,  Ire- 


land,  or  America,  in  Australia,  India,  or 
Canada. 

The  fallacy  of  the  Englishman,  be  he 
London  apprentice  or  contributor  to  the 
Athenaum,  is  that  he  erects  a  merely  per 
sonal  standard  in  the  use  of  our  language. 
He  compares  the  English  he  finds  in  the 
novels  of  a  Scotchman  or  in  the  essays  of 
an  American  with  that  which  he  hears 
about  him  daily  in  London,  animadvert 
ing  upon  every  divergence  from  this  local 
British  usage  as  a  departure  from  the 
strict  letter  of  the  law  which  governs  our 
language.  It  is,  of  course,  unfair  to  sug 
gest  that  a  parochial  self-satisfaction 
underlies  this  utilization  of  personal  ex 
perience  as  the  sole  test  of  linguistic  pro 
priety  ;  but  the  procedure  is  amusingly 
illogical. 

The  cockney  has  no  monopoly  of  good 
English  if  even  he  has  his  full  portion. 
The  Englishman  in  England  is  but  the 
elder  brother  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  else 
where  ;  and  by  no  right  of  primogeniture 
does  he  control  the  language  which  is  our 
birthright.  Noah  Webster,  in  the  preface 
from  which  quotation  has  already  been 
made,  remarked  that  American  authors 
had  a  tendency  to  write  "  the  language  in 


its  genuine  idiom,"  and  he  asserted  that 
"  in  this  respect  Franklin  and  Washing 
ton,  whose  language  is  their  hereditary 
mother-tongue,  unsophisticated  by  mod 
ern  grammar,  present  as  pure  models  of 
genuine  English  as  Addison  or  Swift." 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  English  is 
now  more  vigorously  spoken  or  better 
understood  in  London  than  in  New  York 
or  in  Melbourne ;  but  it  is  indisputable 
that  the  student  detects  in  the  ordinary 
speech  of  the  Englishman  many  a  lapse 
from  the  best  usage.  This  contaminat 
ing  of  the  well  of  English  undefiled  is  not 
to  be  defended  because  it  is  due  to  Eng 
lishmen  who  happen  to  live  in  England. 
A  blunder  made  in  Great  Britain  is  to  be 
stigmatized  as  a  Briticism,  and  it  is  to  be 
avoided  by  those  who  take  thought  of 
their  speech  just  as  though  the  impropri 
ety  were  a  Scotticism  or  a  Hibernicism, 
an  Americanism  or  an  Australianism. 
When  a  locution  of  the  London  appren 
tice  is  not  in  accord  with  the  principles 
of  the  language,  there  is  no  prejudice  in 
its  favor  because  it  happened  to  arise 
beside  the  Thames  rather  than  on  the 
shores  of  the  Hudson  or  by  the  banks  of 
the  St.  Lawrence. 


Of  Briticisms  there  are  as  many  and  as 
worthy  of  collection  and  collocation  as 
were  the  most  of  the  Americanisms  the 
all-embracing  Bartlett  gathered  into  his 
dictionary.  Indeed,  if  a  Scot  or  a  Yankee 
were  to  prepare  a  glossary  of  Briticisms 
on  the  ample  scale  adopted  by  Mr.  Bart 
lett,  and  with  the  same  generous  hospi 
tality,  the  result  would  surprise  no  one 
more  than  the  Englishman.  We  should 
find  in  its  pages  many  a  word  and  phrase 
and  turn  of  speech  common  enough  in 
England  and  quite  foreign  to  the  best 
usage  of  those  who  speak  English— Brit 
icisms  as  worthy  of  reproof  as  the  worst 
specimen  of  "the  mongrel  speech  adopted 
by  some  humorists  in  America."  These 
are  to  be  sought  rather  in  the  written  lan 
guage  than  in  oral  speech,  though  there 
are  Briticisms  a-plenty  in  the  talk  of  the 
Londoner,  from  the  suppression  of  the 
initial  h  among  the  masses  to  the  dropping 
of  the  final  £-  among  the  classes.  Of  a  truth, 
precision  of  speech  is  not  frequent  in 
London,  and  not  seldom  the  delivery  of 
the  Englishman  of  education  nowadays 
may  fairly  be  called  slovenly.  As  I  recall 
the  list  of  those  whom  I  have  heard  use 
the  English  language  with  mingled  ease 


and  elegance,  I  find  fewer  Englishmen 
than  either  Scotchmen  or  Americans. 
Ouintilian  tells  us  that  an  old  Athenian 
woman  called  the  eloquent  Theophrastus 
a  stranger,  and  declared  "that  she  had 
discovered  him  to  be  a  foreigner  only 
from  his  speaking  in  a  manner  too  Attic." 
Something  of  this  ultra-precision  is  per 
haps  to  be  observed  to-day  in  the  modern 
Athens,  be  that  Edinburgh  or  Boston. 

In  the  ordinary  speech  of  Englishmen 
chere  are  not  a  few  vocables  which  grate 
on  American  ears.  Sometimes  they  are 
ludicrous,  sometimes  they  are  hideous, 
sometimes  they  seem  to  us  simply  strange. 
Thus  when  Matthew  Arnold  wrote  about 
Tolstoi,  he  told  us  that  Anna  Karenina 
"throws  herself  under  the  wheels  of  a 
goods  train."  To  us  Americans  this 
sounds  odd,  as  it  is  our  habit  to  call  the 
means  of  self-destruction  chosen  by  the 
Russian  heroine  "  a.  freight  train."  But 
it  is  simply  due  to  the  accidental  evolu 
tion  of  railroad  terminology  in  England 
and  in  America  at  the  same  time,  where 
by  the  same  thing  came  to  be  called  by  a 
different  name  on  either  side  of  the  At 
lantic.  Neither  term  has  a  right  of  way 
as  against  the  other ;  and  it  would  be  in- 


teresting  to  foresee  which  will  get  down 
to  our  great-grandchildren.  In  like  man 
ner  the  keyless  watch  of  Great  Britain  is 
the  stem-winder  of  the  United  States ; 
and  here,  again,  there  is  little  to  choose, 
as  both  words  are  logical. 

The  use  of  like  for  as,  not  uncommon  in 
the  Southern  States,  has  there  always 
been  regarded  as  an  indefensible  collo 
quialism  ;  but  in  England  it  is  heard  in 
the  conversation  of  literary  men  of  high 
standing,  and  now  and  again  it  even  gets 
itself  into  print  in  books  of  good  repute. 
It  will  be  found,  for  instance,  in  the 
sketch  of  Macaulay  which  the  late  Cotter 
Morrison  wrote  for  the  series  of  English 
Men  of  Letters  edited  by  Mr.  John  Mor- 
ley.  And  Walter  Bagehot  represents  the 
dwellers  in  old  manor-houses  and  in  ru 
ral  parsonages  asking,  "Why  can't  they 
[the  French]  have  Kings,  Lords,  and 
Commons,  like  we  have?"  Here  occa 
sion  serves  to  remark  that  Bagehot's  own 
writing  is  besprinkled  with  Briticisms; 
his  style  is  slouchy  beyond  belief ;  it  is 
impossible  to  imagine  a  Frenchman  or  an 
American  capable  of  thinking  as  clearly 
and  as  cogently  as  Bagehot,  and  willing 
to  write  as  carelessly. 


To  be  noted  also  is  the  British  habit  of 
saying  *'  very  pleased,"  when  the  tradition 
of  the  language  and  the  best  American 
usage  alike  require  one  to  say  "  very  much 
pleased."  Equally  noteworthy  is  the  mis 
use  of  without  for  unless,  condemned  in 
America  as  a  vulgarism,  but  discoverable 
in  England  in  the  pages  of  important  pe 
riodical  publications;  for  example,  in  the 
number  of  the  New  Review  for  August, 
1890,  we  find  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  who,  as 
a  member  of  her  Majesty's  Privy  Coun 
cil,  ought  to  be  familiar  with  the  Queen's 
English,  writing  that  "  nothing  can  be 
brought  before  the  Vestry  without  the 
Vestry  is  duly  summoned."  Among  the 
political  Briticisms  which  deserve  collec 
tion  as  well  as  political  Americanisms, 
although  far  less  picturesque,  are  to  be 
recorded  the  use  of  the  government  when 
the  ministry  rather  is  intended,  and  also 
the  habit  of  accepting  these  nouns  of 
multitude  as  plural,  and  therefore  of  writ 
ing  "  the  ministry  are  "  and  "  the  govern 
ment  are "  where  an  American  would 
more  naturally  write  "  the  administration 
is"  Another  more  recent  Briticism  is 
the  growing  habit  of  dropping  the  article, 
and  saying  that  "  ministers  are,"  meaning 


ifl 


thereby  that  the  cabinet  as  a  whole  is 
about  to  take  action.  As  yet  I  have  not 
seen  "  ministers  is,"  but  even  this  barbaric 
locution  bids  fair  to  be  reached  in  course 
of  time.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the 
terminology  of  politics  is  independent  in 
its  tendencies,  and  frequently  "  breaks  the 
slate"  of  the  regular  grammar.  It  was 
the  speech-making  of  an  American  Sen 
ator  which  appeared  to  the  late  George  T. 
Lanigan  as  "  a  foretaste  of  that  grammat 
ical  millennium  when  the  singular  verb 
shall  lie  down  with  the  plural  noun,  and 
a  little  conjunction  shall  lead  them." 

Perhaps  the  two  most  frequent  Briti 
cisms  and  the  most  obvious  are  the  use  of 
different  to  where  the  American  more  ap 
propriately  and  logically  says  different 
from,  and  the  employment  of  directly  and 
its  synonym  immediately  for  as  soon  as 
in  such  phrases  as  "  directly  he  arrived,  he 
did  thus."  Even  Thackeray,  in  his  most 
carefully  written  and  most  artistic  novel, 
allowed  Henry  Esmond  to  write  instantly 
for  as  soon  as,  whereby  he  was  guilty  also 
of  an  anachronism,  as  this  blunder  is  a 
Briticism  of  comparatively  recent  origin, 
and  is  not  yet  to  be  found  in  the  pages  of 
any  American  author  of  authority.  It  is 


perhaps  worthy  of  note  that  in  that  tri 
umph  of  psychologic  insight  Barry  Lyn 
don,  which  also  is  written  in  the  first  per 
son,  we  find  like  for  as,  much  as  though 
it  were  a  Hibernicism,  which  we  do  not 
understand  it  to  be. 

I  am  informed  and  believe — for  in  mat 
ters  of  language  I  prefer  to  testify  on  in 
formation  and  belief  only,  and  not  to 
make  affidavit  of  my  own  knowledge, 
necessarily  circumscribed  by  individual 
experience — I  am  informed  and  believe 
that  an  Englishman  says  lift  where  we 
say  elevator,  and  that  he  calls  that  man 
an  agricultural  laborer  whom  an  Amer 
ican  would  term  a  farm  hand.  In  the  one 
case  the  Briticism  is  the  shorter,  and  in 
the  other  the  Americanism.  I  am  told 
that  an  Englishman  calls  for  a  tin  of  con 
densed  milk,  when  an  American  would 
ask  for  a  can,  and  that  an  Englishman 
even  ventures  to  taste  tinned  meat,  which 
we  Americans  would  suspect  to  be  tainted 
'by  the  metal,  although  we  have  no  preju 
dice  against  canned  meats.  I  understand 
that  an  Englishman  stops  at  a  hotel  at 
which  an  American  would  stay.  I  have 
been  led  to  believe  that  an  Englishwom 
an  of  fashion  will  go  to  a  swagger  func- 


tion,  at  which  she  will  expect  to  meet  no 
end  of  smart  people,  meaning  thereby  not 
clever  folks,  but  swells.  I  have  heard 
that  an  Englishman  speaks  of  a  wire, 
meaning  a  telegram  ;  and  I  know  that  an 
English  friend  of  mine  in  New  York  re 
ceived  a  letter  from  his  sister  in  London, 
bidding  him  hold  himself  in  readiness  to 
cross  the  Atlantic  at  a  day's  notice,  and 
informing  him  that  he  might  "  have  to 
come  over  on  a  wire!'  To  an  American, 
going  over  the  ocean  "  on  a  wire  "  seems 
an  unusual  mode  of  travelling,  and  too 
Blondin-like  to  be  attempted  by  less  ex 
pert  acrobats. 

The  point  half-way  between  us  and  our 
adversary  seems  nearer  to  him  ;  but  this 
is  an  optical  delusion,  just  as  the  jet  of 
water  in  the  centre  of  a  fountain  appears 
closer  to  the  other  side  than  to  ours.  So 
it  is  not  easy  for  any  one  on  either  shore 
of  the  Atlantic  to  be  absolutely  impartial 
in  considering  the  speech  of  those  on  the 
other.  An  American  with  a  sense  of  the 
poetic  cannot  but  prefer  to  the  imported 
word  autumn  the  native  and  more  logical 
word /"#//,  which  the  British  have  strange 
ly  suffered  to  drop  into  disuse.  An  Amer 
ican  conscious  of  the  fact  that  cunning 


is  frequent  in  the  mouths  of  his  fair  coun 
trywomen,  and  that  it  is  sadly  wrenched 
from  its  true  significance,  is  aware  also 
that  the  British  are  trying  to  cramp  our 
mother-tongue  by  limiting  bug  to  a  single 
offensive  species,  by  giving  to  bloody  an 
ulterior  significance  as  of  semi-profanity, 
and  by  restricting  sick  to  a  single  form  of 
physical  wretchedness,  forgetful  that  Pe 
ter's  wife's  mother  once  lay  sick  of  a  fever, 
and  that  an  officer  in  her  Majesty's  serv 
ice  may  even  now  go  home  on  sick  leave. 
The  ordinary  and  broader  use  vi.sick  is 
not  as  uncommon  in  England  as  some 
British  critics  affect  to  think.  I  have 
heard  an  Englishman  defend  the  use  of 
/  feel  bad  for  /  feel  ill,  on  the  ground 
that  he  employed  the  former  phrase  only 
when  he  was  sick  enough  to  be  above 
all  thought  of  grammar. 

We  Americans  have  extended  the  mean 
ing  of  transom,  which,  strictly  speaking, 
was  the  bar  across  the  top  of  a  door  under 
the  fanlight  itself.  This  American  en 
largement  of  the  meaning  of  transom 
has  not  found  favor  at  the  hands  of 
British  critics,  who  did  not  protest  in 
any  way  against  the  British  restric 
tion  of  the  meaning  of  bug,  bloody,  and 


sick.  Indeed,  in  the  very  number  of 
the  London  weekly  review  in  which  we 
could  read  a  protest  against  Mr.  Howells's 
employment  of  transom  in  its  more  mod 
ern  American  meaning  was  to  be  seen  an 
advertisement  of  a  journalist  in  want  of 
a  job,  and  vaunting  himself  as  expert  in 
the  writing  of  leaderettes.  Surely  leaderette 
is  as  unlovely  a  vocable  as  one  could  find 
in  a  Sabbath  day's  reading;  and,  more 
over,  it  is  almost  unintelligible  to  an 
American,  who  calls  that  an  editorial 
which  the  Englishman  calls  a  leader,  and 
who  would  term  that  an  editorial  para 
graph  which  the  Englishman  terms  a 
leaderette.  Another  sentence  plucked 
from  the  pages  of  the  Saturday  Review 
about  the  same  time  is  also  almost  in 
comprehensible  to  the  ordinary  Ameri 
can  :  "  But  he  is  so  brilliant  and  so  much 
by  way  of  being  complete  that  they  will 
be  few  who  read  his  book  and  do  not 
wish  to  know  more  of  him."  From  the 
context  we  may  hazard  a  guess  that  so 
much  by  way  of  being  is  here  synonymous 
with  almost.  But  what  would  Lindley  Mur 
ray  say  to  so  vile  a  phrase  ? — that  Lind 
ley  Murray  whom  the  British  invoke  so 
often,  ignoring  or  ignorant  of  the  fact 


that  he  was  an  American.  Holding  with 
the  late  Richard  Grant  White  that  ours 
is  really  a  grammarless  tongue,  and  dis 
trusting  all  efforts  of  school-masters  to 
strait-jacket  our  speech  into  formulas 
borrowed  from  the  Latin,  I  for  one  should 
be  quite  willing  to  abandon  Lindley  Mur 
ray  to  the  British.  It  is  not  the  first  time 
that  an  American  weed  has  been  exhibited 
in  England  as  a  horticultural  beauty ;  our 
common  way-side  mullein,  for  example,  is 
cherished  across  the  Atlantic  as  the 
"  American  velvet  plant." 

Other  divergencies  of  usage  may  per 
haps  deserve  a  passing  word.  It  is  an 
Americanism  to  call  him  clever  whom  we 
deem  good-natured  only  ;  and  it  is  a  Brit 
icism  to  call  that  entertainment  smart 
which  we  consider  very  fashionable  ;  and 
of  the  two  the  Briticism  seems  the  more 
natural  outgrowth.  So  also  the  British 
terminus  of  Latin  origin  is  better  than  the 
American  depot  of  French  origin ;  it  is  a 
wonder  that  so  uncouth  an  absurdity  as 
depot  ever  got  into  use  when  we  had  at 
hand  the  natural  word  station. 

Sometimes  the  difference  between  the 
Americanism  and  Briticism  is  very  slight. 
In  America  coal  is  put  on  the  grate  in  the 


singular,  while  in  England  coals  are  put 
in  the  grate  in  the  plural.  In  the  United 
States  beets  are  served  at  table  as  a  vege 
table,  while  in  Great  Britain  beet  root  is 
served.  Oddly  enough,  the  British  do 
not  say  potato  root  or  carrot  root  when 
they  order  either  of  those  esculents  to  be 
cooked,  and  as  the  American  usage  seems 
the  more  logical,  perhaps  it  is  more  likely 
to  prevail. 

Sometimes — and  indeed  one  might  say 
often — a  word  or  a  usage  is  denounced  by 
some  British  critic  without  due  examina 
tion  of  the  evidence  on  its  behalf.  Pro 
fessor  Freeman,  for  example,  who  is  fre 
quently  finicky  in  his  choice  of  words, 
objected  strongly  to  the  use  of  metropolis 
as  descriptive  of  the  chief  city  of  a  coun 
try,  rather  restricting  the  word  to  its 
more  ecclesiastical  significance  as  a  cathe 
dral  town,  and  Mr.  Skeat  has  admitted 
the  validity  of  the  objection.  But  Mr.  R. 
O.  Williams,  in  his  recent  suggestive  paper 
on  "Good  English  for  Americans,"  in 
forms  us  that  metropolis  was  employed  to 
indicate  the  most  important  city  of  the 
State  by  Macaulay,  an  author  most  care 
ful  in  the  use  of  words,  and  by  De  Quincey, 
a  purist  of  the  strictest  sect.  Nay,  more, 


he  even  finds  metropolis  thus  taken  in  the 
prose  of  Addison  and  in  the  verse  of  Milton. 
In  like  manner  Dr.  Fitzedward  Hall 
had  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  reliable, 
often  objurgated  as  an  Americanism,  is  to 
be  found  in  a  letter  written  in  1624  by  one 
Richard  Montagu,  afterwards  a  bishop, 
and  that  it  owes  its  introduction  into  lit 
erature  to  Coleridge,  who  used  it  in  1800. 
Dr.  Hall  has  also  shown  that  scientist, 
which  Mr.  A.  J.  Ellis  saw  fit  to  denounce 
as  an  "American  barbaric  trisyllable," 
was  first  used  by  an  Englishman,  Dr. 
Whewell,  in  1840.  One  of  the  abiding 
advantages  of  the  New  English  Diction 
ary  of  the  Philological  Society — an  advan 
tage  which  may  more  than  counterbalance 
the  carelessness  with  which  its  quotations 
have  been  verified — is  that  its  columns 
can  be  used  to  convince  even  the  ordinary 
British  critic  that  many  a  word  and  many 
an  expression  which  he  is  prompt  to  con 
demn  as  an  Americanism,  and  therefore 
pestilent,  is  to  be  found  in  the  literature 
of  our  language  long  before  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  broke  the  political 
unity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  And  al 
though  a  negative  is  always  difficult  of 
proof,  this  same  New  English  Dictionary 


gives  evidence  in  behalf  of  the  late  Mr. 
White's  contention  that  Britisher  is  not 
an  Americanism,  but  a  Briticism ;  he  said 
that  the  word  was  never  heard  in  the 
mouth  of  an  American,  and,  as  it  hap 
pens,  Dr.  Murray  is  not  able  to  adduce  in 
its  behalf  a  single  quotation  from  any 
American  author. 

The  effort  for  precision,  the  desire  to 
make  a  word  do  no  more  than  is  set  down 
for  it,  the  wish  to  have  warrant  for  every 
syllable,  is  neither  despicable  nor  futile. 
It  is  only  by  taking  thought  that  language 
can  be  bent  to  do  our  will.  The  sparse  vo 
cabulary  and  the  rude  idioms  of  the  shep 
herd  or  the  teamster  are  inadequate  to 
the  needs  of  the  poet  and  of  the  student. 
The  ideal  of  style  is  said  to  be  the  speech 
of  the  people  in  the  mouth  of  the  scholar. 
And  Walter  Bagehot,  in  his  essay  on 
"Sterne  and  Thackeray" — one  of  the 
few  of  his  papers  which  have  art  and  form 
as  well  as  sympathy  and  insight — declares 
that  "  how  language  was  first  invented 
and  made  we  may  not  know,  but  beyond 
doubt  it  was  shaped  and  fashioned  into 
its  present  state  by  common  ordinary 
men  and  women  using  it  for  common  and 
ordinary  purposes.  They  wanted  a  carv- 


ing-knife,  not  a  razor  or  lancet ;  and  those 
great  artists  who  have  to  use  language 
for  more  exquisite  purposes,  who  employ 
it  to  describe  changing  sentiments  and 
momentary  fancies,  and  the  fluctuating 
and  indefinite  inner  world,  must  use  curi 
ous  nicety  and  hidden  but  effectual  arti 
fice,  else  they  cannot  duly  punctuate  their 
thoughts  and  slice  the  fine  edges  of  their 
reflections.  A  hair's  breadth  is  as  im 
portant  to  them  as  a  yard's  breadth  to  a 
common  workman." 

To  put  so  sharp  a  point  upon  his  style, 
the  artist  in  words  must  choose  his  mate 
rial  with  unfaltering  care.  He  must  se 
lect  and  store  away  in  his  scrip  the  best 
words.  He  must  free  his  vocabulary 
from  clumsy  localisms,  whether  these  be 
Americanisms  or  Briticisms.  He  must  be 
true  to  the  inherent  and  vital  principles 
of  our  language,  not  yielding  to  temporary 
defections  from  the  truth,  whether  these 
flourish  in  Great  Britain  or  in  the  United 
States. 

It  cannot  be  said  too  often  that  there 
is  no  basis  for  the  belief  that  somewhere 
there  exists  a  sublimated  English  lan 
guage,  perfect  and  impeccable.  This  is 
the  flawless  ideal  to  which  all  artists  in 


28 


style  strive  vainly  to  attain,  whether  they 
are  Englishmen  or  Americans,  Austra 
lians  or  Canadians,  Irish  or  Scotch.  But 
nowhere  is  this  speech  without  stain 
spoken  by  man  in  his  daily  life— not  in 
London,  where  cockneyisms  abound,  not 
in  Oxford,  where  university  slang  is  lux 
uriant  and  where  pedantry  flourishes. 
Nowhere  has  this  pure  and  undefiled 
language  ever  been  spoken  by  any  com 
munity.  Nowhere  will  it  ever  be  spoken 
other  than  by  a  few  men  here  and  there 
gifted  by  nature  or  trained  by  art.  The 
speech  of  the  people  in  the  mouth  of  the 
scholar,  that  is  the  absolute  ideal  which 
no  man  can  find  by  travel,  and  which 
every  man  must  make  for  himself  by  toil, 
avoiding  alike  the  tendency  of  the  people 
towards  slouching  inaccuracy  and  the 
tendency  of  the  scholar  towards  academic 
frigidity.  Of  the  two,  the  more  whole 
some  leaning  is  towards  the  forcible 
idioms  of  the  plain  people  rather  than  the 
tamer  precision  of  the  student.  The  wild 
flowers  of  speech,  plucked  betimes  with 
the  dew  still  on  them,  humble  and  homely 
and  touching,  such  as  we  find  in  Franklin 
and  in  Emerson,  in  Lowell  and  in  Tho- 
reau,  are  to  be  preferred  infinitely  before 


the  waxen  petals  of  rhetoric  as  a  school 
master  arranges  them.  The  grammarian, 
the  purist,  the  pernicketty  stickler  for 
trifles,  is  the  deadly  foe  of  good  English, 
rich  in  idioms  and  racy  of  the  soil.  Every 
man  who  has  taught  himself  to  know  good 
English  and  to  love  it  and  to  delight  in  it, 
must  sympathize  with  Professor  Louns- 
bury's  lack  of  admiration  "for  that  gram 
mar-school  training  which  consists  in 
teaching  the  pupil  how  much  more  he 
knows  about  our  tongue  than  the  great 
masters  who  have  moulded  it,  which  prac 
tically  sets  up  the  claim  that  the  only  men 
who  are  able  to  write  English  properly  are 
the  men  who  have  never  shown  any  ca 
pacity  to  write  it  at  all." 

As  to  the  English  of  the  future,  who 
knows  what  the  years  may  bring  forth  ? 
The  language  is  alive  and  growing  and 
extending  on  all  sides,  to  the  grief  of  the 
purist  and  the  pedant,  who  prefer  a  dead 
language  that  they  can  dissect  at  will,  and 
that  has  come  to  the  end  of  its  useful 
ness.  The  existence  of  Briticisms  and  of 
Americanisms  and  of  Austral ianisms  is  a 
sign  of  healthy  vitality.  "  Neither  usage," 
said  Professor  Freeman,  after  contrasting 
certain  Americanisms  and  Briticisms, 


"  can  be  said  to  be  in  itself  better  or 
worse  than  the  other.  Each  usage  is  the 
better  in  the  land  in  which  it  has  grown 
up  of  itself."  An  unprejudiced  critic,  if 
such  a  one  could  haply  be  found,  would 
probably  discover  an  equality  of  blemish 
on  either  side  of  the  ocean — more  preci 
sion  and  pedantry  on  the  one  side,  and  a 
more  daring  carelessness  on  the  other. 
To  declare  a  single  standard  of  speech  is 
impossible. 

That  there  will  ever  be  any  broad  di 
vergence  between  the  English  language 
and  American  speech,  such,  for  example, 
as  differentiates  the  Portuguese  from  the 
Spanish,  is  now  altogether  unlikely.  A 
divergence  as  wide  as  this  has  been  im 
possible  since  the  invention  of  printing, 
and  it  is  even  less  possible  since  the 
school-master  has  been  abroad  teaching 
the  same  A  B  C  in  London,  New  York, 
Sydney,  and  Calcutta.  Although  it  has 
ceased  absolutely  to  be  British,  the  chief 
literature  of  North  America  is  still  Eng 
lish,  and  must  remain  so,  just  as  the  chief 
literature  of  South  America  is  still  Span 
ish.  Sefior  Juan  Valera,  declaring  this 
truth  in  the  preface  to  his  delightful  Pe- 
pita  Ximenez,  reminds  us  that  "the  litera- 


ture  of  Syracuse,  of  Antioch,  and  of  Alex 
andria  was  as  much  Greek  literature  as 
was  the  literature  of  Athens."  In  like 
manner  we  may  recall  the  fact  that  Lu- 
can,  Seneca,  Martial,  and  Quintilian  were 
all  of  them  Spaniards  by  birth. 

That  any  one  country  shall  remain  or 
become  at  once  the  political,  financial, 
and  literary  centre  of  the  wide  series  of 
Anglo-Saxon  States  which  now  encircles 
the  globe  is  almost  equally  unlikely.  But 
we  may  be  sure  that  that  branch  of  our 
Anglo-Saxon  stock  will  use  the  best  Eng 
lish,  and  will  perhaps  see  its  standards  of 
speech  accepted  by  the  other  branches, 
which  is  most  vigorous  physically,  men 
tally,  and  morally,  which  has  the  most  in 
telligence,  and  which  knows  its  duty  best 
and  does  it  most  fearlessly. 

1891 


AS   TO   "AMERICAN    SPELLING" 


the  author  of  "  The  Ca 
thedral  "  was  accosted  by 
the  wandering  Englishmen 
within  the  lofty  aisles  of 
Chartres,  he  cracked  a  joke, 

"  Whereat  they  stared,  then  laughed,  and  we  were  friends^ 
The  seas,  the  wars,  the  centuries  interposed, 
Abolished  in  the  truce  of  common  speech 
And  mutual  comfort  of  the  mother-tongue." 

In  this  common  speech  other  English 
men  are  not  always  ready  to  acknowledge 
the  full  rights  of  Lowell's  countryman. 
They  would  put  us  off  with  but  a  youngef 
brother's  portion  of  the  mother-tongue, 
seeming  somehow  to  think  that  they 
are  more  closely  related  to  the  common 
parent  than  we  are.  But  Orlando,  the 
younger  son  of  Sir  Rowland  du  Bois,  was 
no  villain  ;  and  though  we  have  broken 
with  the  father-land,  the  mother-tongue 
is  none  the  less  our  heritage.  Indeed  we 


33 


need  not  care  whether  the  division  is  per 
stirpes  or  per  capita,  our  share  is  not  the 
less  in  either  case. 

Beneath  the  impotent  protests  which 
certain  British  newspapers  are  prone  to 
make  every  now  and  again  against  the 
"  American  language "  as  a  whole,  and 
against  the  stray  Americanism  which  has 
happened  last  to  invade  England,  there 
is  a  tacit  assumption  that  we  Americans 
are  outer  barbarians,  mere  strangers, 
wickedly  tampering  with  something 
which  belongs  to  the  British  exclusively. 
And  the  outcry  against  the  "  American 
language  "  is  not  as  shrill  nor  as  piteous 
as  the  shriek  of  horror  with  which  cer 
tain  of  the  journals  of  London  greet 
"  American  spelling,"  a  hideous  monster, 
which  they  feared  was  ready  to  devour 
them  as  soon  as  the  international  copy 
right  bill  should  become  law.  In  the 
midst  of  every  discussion  of  the  effect  of 
the  copyright  act  in  Great  Britain,  the 
bugbear  of  "American  spelling"  reared 
its  grisly  head.  The  London  Times  de 
clared  that  English  publishers  would  nev 
er  put  any  books  into  type  in  the  United 
States  because  the  people  of  England 
would  never  tolerate  the  peculiarities  of 

3 


orthography  which  prevailed  in  Ameri 
can  printing-offices.  The  S/.  James's 
Gazette  promptly  retorted  that  "  already 
newspapers  in  London  are  habitually 
using  the  ugliest  forms  of  American  spell 
ing,  and  those  silly  eccentricities  do  not 
make  the  slightest  difference  in  their  cir 
culation."  The  Times  and  the  St.  James's 
Gazette  might  differ  as  to  the  effect  of 
the  copyright  act  on  the  profits  of  the 
printers  of  England, but  they  agreed  heart 
ily  as  to  the  total  depravity  of  "  Ameri 
can  spelling."  I  think  that  any  disin 
terested  foreigner  who  might  chance  to 
hear  these  violent  outcries  would  sup 
pose  that  English  orthography  was  as 
the  law  of  the  Medes  and  Persians,  which 
altereth  not ;  he  would  be  justified  in  be 
lieving  that  the  system  of  spelling  now 
in  use  in  Great  Britain  was  hallowed  by 
the  Established  Church,  and  in  some  way 
mysteriously  connected  wTith  the  State 
religion.  Indeed,  no  other  explanation 
would  suffice  to  account  for  the  vigor,  the 
violence,  and  the  persistency  of  the  pro 
tests. 

Just  what  the  British  newspapers  are 
afraid  of  it  is  not  easy  to  say  and  it  is 
difficult  to  declare  just  what  they  mean 


when  they  talk  of  "  American  spelling." 
Probably  they  do  not  refer  to  the  im 
provements  in  orthography  suggested  by 
the  first  great  American  —  Benjamin 
Franklin.  Possibly  they  do  refer  to  the 
modifications  in  the  accepted  spelling 
proposed  by  another  American,  Noah 
Webster — not  so  great,  and  yet  not  to  be 
named  slightingly  by  any  one  who  knows 
how  fertile  his  labors  have  been  for  the 
good  of  the  whole  country.  Noah  Web 
ster,  so  his  biographer,  Mr.  Scudder,  tells 
us,  "  was  one  of  the  first  to  carry  a  spirit 

of  democracy  into  letters Throughout 

his  work  one  may  detect  a  confidence  in 
the  common-sense  of  the  people  which 
was  as  firm  as  Franklin's."  But  the  in 
novations  of  Webster  were  hesitating  and 
often  inconsistent ;  and  the  most  of  them 
have  been  abandoned  by  later  editors  of 
Webster's  American  Dictionary  of  the 
English  Language. 

What,  then,  do  British  writers  mean 
when  they  animadvert  upon  "  American 
spelling?"  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to 
discover,  the  British  journalists  object  to 
certain  minor  labor-saving  improvements 
of  American  orthography,  such  as  the 
dropping  of  the  k  from  almanack,  the 


omission  of  one  g  from  waggon,  and  the 
like  ;  and  they  protest  with  double  force, 
with  all  the  strength  that  in  them  lies, 
against  the  substitution  of  a  single  /  for 
a  double  /  in  such  words  as  traveller, 
against  the  omission  of  the  u  from  such 
words  as  honour,  against  the  substitution 
of  an  s  for  a  c  in  such  words  as  defence, 
and  against  the  transposing  of  the  final 
two  letters  of  such  words  as  theatre.  The 
objection  to  "American  spelling"  may 
lie  deeper  than  I  have  here  suggested, 
and  it  may  have  a  wider  application  ;  but 
I  have  done  my  best  to  state  it  fully  and 
fairly  as  I  have  deduced  it  from  a  painful 
perusal  of  many  columns  of  exacerbated 
British  writing. 

Now  if  I  have  succeeded  in  stating 
honestly  the  extent  of  the  British  jour 
nalistic  objections  to  "  American  spell 
ing,"  the  unprejudiced  reader  may  be 
moved  to  ask  :  "  Is  this  all  ?  Are  these 
few  and  slight  and  unimportant  changes 
the  cause  of  this  mighty  commotion  ?" 
One  may  agree  with  Sainte  -  Beuve  in 
thinking  that  "  orthography  is  the  begin 
ning  of  literature,"  without  discovering 
in  these  modifications  from  the  John 
sonian  canon  any  cause  for  extreme  dis- 


37 


gust.  And  since  I  have  quoted  Sainte- 
Beuve  once,  I  venture  to  cite  him  again, 
and  to  take  from  the  same  letter  of  March 
15,  1867,  his  suggestion  that  "if  we  write 
more  correctly,  let  it  be  to  express  espe 
cially  honest  feelings  and  just  thoughts." 

Feelings  may  be  honest  though  they 
are  violent,  but  irritation  is  not  the  best 
frame  of  mind  for  just  thinking.  The 
tenacity  with  which  some  of  the  newspa 
pers  of  London  are  wont  to  defend  the 
accepted  British  orthography  is  perhaps 
due  rather  to  feeling  than  to  thought. 
Lowell  told  us  that  esthetic  hatred  burn 
ed  nowadays  with  as  fierce  a  flame  as  ever 
once  theological  hatred  ;  and  any  Ameri 
can  who  chances  to  note  the  force  and 
the  fervor  and  the  frequency  of  the  ob 
jurgations  against  "  American  spelling" 
in  the  columns  of  the  Saturday  Review, 
for  example,  and  of  the  Athenaum,  may 
find  himself  wondering  as  to  the  date  of 
the  papal  bull  which  declared  the  infalli 
bility  of  contemporary  British  orthogra 
phy,  and  as  to  the  place  where  the  coun 
cil  of  the  Church  was  held  at  which  it 
was  made  an  article  of  faith. 

The  Saturday  Review  and  the  Athe- 
nceum,  highly  pitched  as  their  voices  are, 


yet  are  scarcely  shriller  in  their  cry  to 
arms  against  the  possible  invasion  of  the 
sanctity  of  British  orthography  by  "Amer 
ican  spelling  "  than  is  the  London  Times, 
the  solid  representative  of  British  thought, 
the  mighty  organ-voice  of  British  feeling. 
Yet  the  Times  is  not  without  orthograph 
ic  eccentricities  of  its  own,  as  Matthew 
Arnold  took  occasion  to  point  out.  In 
his  essay  on  the  "  Literary  Influence  of 
Academies,"  he  asserts  that  "  every  one 
has  noticed  the  way  in  which  the  Times 
chooses  to  spell  the  word  diocese ;  it  al 
ways  spells  it  diocess,  deriving  it,  I  sup 
pose,  from  Zeus  and  census.  .  .  .  Imagine 
an  educated  Frenchman  indulging  him 
self  in  an  orthographical  antic  of  this 
sort! ' 

When  we  read  what  is  written  in  the 
Times  and  the  Saturday  Review  and  the 
Athenceum,  sometimes  in  set  articles  on 
the  subject,  and  even  more  often  in  cas 
ual  and  subsidiary  slurs  in  the  course  of 
book -reviews,  we  wonder  at  the  vehe 
mence  of  the  feeling  displayed.  If  we 
did  not  know  that  ancient  abuses  are  of 
ten  defended  with  more  vigor  and  with 
louder  shouts  than  inheritances  of  less 
doubtful  worth,  we  might  suppose  that 


the  present  spelling  of  the  English  lan 
guage  was  in  a  condition  perfectedly  sat 
isfactory  alike  to  scholar  and  to  student. 
Such,  however,  is  not  the  case.  The  lead 
ing  philologists  of  Great  Britain  and  of 
the  United  States  have  repeatedly  de 
nounced  English  spelling  as  it  now  is  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  Professor 
Max  Miiller  at  Oxford  is  no  less  emphatic 
than  Professor  Whitney  at  Yale.  There 
is  now  living  no  scholar  of  any  repute 
who  any  longer  defends  the  orthodox 
and  ordinary  orthography  of  the  English 
language. 

The  fact  is  that  a  little  learning  is  quite 
as  dangerous  a  thing  now  as  it  was  in 
Pope's  day.  Those  who  are  volubly  de 
nouncing  "American  spelling"  in  the 
columns  of  British  journals  are  not  stu 
dents  of  the  history  of  English  speech  ; 
they  are  not  scholars  in  English  ;  in  so 
far  as  they  know  anything  of  the  lan 
guage,  they  are  but  amateur  philologists. 
As  a  well-known  writer  on  spelling  re 
form  once  neatly  remarked,  "  The  men 
who  get  their  etymology  by  inspiration 
are  like  the  poor  in  that  we  have  them 
always  with  us."  Although  few  of  them 
are  as  ignorant  and  dense  as  the  unknown 


unfortunate  who  first  tortured  the  ob 
viously  jocular  Welsh  rabbit  into  a  pedan 
tic  and  impossible  Welsh  rarebit,  still  the 
most  of  their  writing  serves  no  good  pur 
pose  ;  to  quote  the  apt  illustration  of  a 
Western  humorist,  "  It  has  as  little  in 
fluence  as  the  p  in  pneumonia."  Nor  do 
we  discover  in  these  specimens  of  British 
journalism  that  abundant  urbanity  which 
etymology  might  lead  us  to  look  for  in 
the  writing  of  inhabitants  of  so  large  a 
city  as  London. 

Any  one  who  takes  the  trouble  to  in 
form  himself  on  the  subject  will  soon 
discover  that  it  is  only  the  half-educated 
man  who  defends  the  contemporary  or 
thography  of  the  English  language,  and 
who  denounces  the  alleged  "  American 
spelling  "  of  center  and  honor.  The  un 
educated  reader  may  wonder  perchance 
what  the  g  is  doing  in  sovereign ;  the 
half -educated  reader  discerns  in  the  g 
a  connecting  link  between  the  English 
sovereign  and  the  Latin  regno  ;  the  well- 
educated  reader  knows  that  there  is  no 
philological  connection  whatever  between 
regno  and  sovereign. 

The  most  of  those  who  write  with  ease 
in  British  journals,  deploring  the  preva- 


lence  of  "  American  spelling,"  have  never 
carried  their  education  so  far  as  to  ac 
quire  that  foundation  of  wisdom  which 
prevents  a  man  from  expressing  an  opin 
ion  on  subjects  as  to  which  he  is  igno 
rant.  The  object  of  education,  it  has 
been  said,  is  to  make  a  man  know  what 
he  knows,  and  also  to  know  how  much 
he  does  not  know.  Despite  the  close 
sympathy  between  the  intellectual  pur 
suits,  a  student  of  optics  is  not  qualified 
to  express  an  opinion  in  esthetics;  and 
on  the  other  hand,  a  critic  of  art  may 
easily  be  ignorant  of  science.  Now  lit 
erature  is  one  of  the  arts,  and  philology 
is  a  science.  Though  men  of  letters  have 
to  use  words  as  the  tools  of  their  trade, 
orthography  is  none  the  less  a  branch  of 
philology,  and  philology  does  not  come 
by  nature.  Literature  may  even  exist 
without  writing,  and  therefore  without 
spelling.  Homer,  the  trouveres,  and  the 
minnesingers  practised  their  art  perhaps 
without  the  aid  of  letters.  Writing,  in 
deed,  has  no  necessary  connection  with  lit 
erature,  still  less  has  orthography.  A  lit 
erary  critic  is  rarely  a  scientific  student 
of  language ;  he  has  no  need  to  be  ;  but 
being  ignorant,  it  is  the  part  of  modesty 


for  him  not  to  expose  his  ignorance.    To 
boast  of  it  is  unseemly. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  appear  as  the  de 
fender  of  the  "  American  spelling  "  which 
the  British  journalists  denounce.  This 
"  American  spelling  "  is  less  absurd  than 
the  British  spelling  only  in  so  far  as  it 
has  varied  therefrom.  Even  in  these 
variations  there  is  abundant  absurdity. 
Once  upon  a  time  most  words  that  now 
are  spelled  with  a  final  c  had  an  added 
k.  Even  now  both  British  and  Ameri 
can  usage  retains  this  k  in  hammock,  al 
though  both  British  and  Americans  have 
dropped  the  needless  letter  from  havoc ; 
while  the  British  retain  the  k  at  the  end 
of  almanack  and  the  Americans  have 
dropped  it.  Dr.  Johnson  was  a  reaction 
ary  in  orthography  as  in  politics ;  and  in 
his  dictionary  he  wilfully  put  a  final  k  to 
words  like  optick,  without  being  generally 
followed  by  the  publick  —  as  he  would 
have  spelled  it.  Music  was  then  musick, 
although,  even  as  late  as  Aubrey's  time, 
it  had  been  musique.  In  our  own  day  we 
are  witnessing  the  very  gradual  substitu 
tion  of  the  logical  technic  for  the  form 
originally  imported  from  France  —  tech 
nique.  As  yet,  so  far  as  I  have  observed, 


no  attempts  have  been  made  to  modify 
the  foreign  spelling  of  cliqite  and  ob 
lique. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  technic  is 
replacing  technique  more  rapidly  —  or 
should  I  say  less  slowly  ? — in  the  United 
States  than  in  Great  Britain.  We  Amer 
icans  like  to  assimilate  our  words  and  to 
make  them  our  own,  while  the  British 
have  rather  a  fondness  for  foreign  phrases. 
A  London  journalist  recently  held  up  to 
public  obloquy  as  an  "  ignorant  Ameri 
canism  "  the  word  program,  although  he 
would  have  found  it  set  down  in  Pro 
fessor  Skeat's  Etymological  Dictionary. 
"Programme  was  taken  from  the  French," 
so  a  recent  writer  reminds  us,  "and  in  vi 
olation  of  analogy,  seeing  that,  when  it 
was  imported  into  English,  we  had  al 
ready  anagram,  cryptogram,  diogra7n, 
epigram,  etc."  The  logical  form  pro 
gram  is  not  common  even  in  America, 
and  British  writers  seem  to  prefer  the 
French  form,  as  British  speakers  still 
give  a  French  pronunciation  to  charade, 
which  in  America  has  long  since  been 
accepted  frankly  as  an  English  word.  So 
we  find  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  in  his  Angling 
Sketches,  referring  to  the  asphalte:  surely 


in  our  language  the  word  is  either  asphal- 
turn  or  asphalt. 

Here,  if  the  excursus  may  be  permitted, 
I  should  like  to  note  also  that  the  Ameri 
can  willingness  to  acknowledge  the  Eng 
lish  language  as  good  enough  for  the  or 
dinary  purposes  of  speech  shows  itself  in 
our  acceptance  of  certain  words  of  for 
eign  origin  as  now  fully  naturalized,  and 
therefore  so  to  be  treated.  The  Ameri 
cans  are  inclined  to  consider  that  formu 
la,  for  example,  and  criterion  and  memo 
randum  and  cherub  and  bureau  are  now 
good  English  words,  forming  their  plu 
rals  by  the  addition  of  an  s.  Our  first 
cousins,  once  removed,  across  the  Atlan 
tic  seem  to  be  still  in  doubt ;  and  there 
fore  we  find  them  making  the  plurals  of 
these  words  in  accordance  with  the  rules 
of  the  various  languages  from  which  the 
several  words  were  derived.  So  in  Brit 
ish  books  we  meet  the  Latin  plurals,  for 
mula:  and  memoranda ;  the  Greek  plural, 
criteria;  the  Hebrew  plural,  cherubim; 
and  the  French  plural,  bureaux.  Oddly 
enough,  the  writers  who  use  these  foreign 
plurals  are  unwilling  to  admit  that  the 
words  thus  modified  is  a  foreign  word, 
for  more  often  than  not  they  print  it 


without  italics,  although  frankly  foreign 
words  are  carefully  italicized.  Possibly 
it  is  idle  to  look  for  any  logic  in  anything 
which  has  to  do  with  modern  English 
orthography  on  either  side  of  the  ocean. 

Perhaps,  however,  there  is  less  even 
than  ordinary  logic  in  the  British  jour 
nalist's  objection  to  the  so-called  "Amer 
ican  spelling"  of  meter ;  for  why  should 
any  one  insist  on  metre  while  unhesita 
tingly  accepting  its  compound  diameter? 
Mr.  John  Bellows,  in  the  preface  to  his 
inestimable  French-English  and  English- 
French  pocket  dictionary,  one  of  the  very 
best  books  of  reference  ever  published, 
informs  us  that  "  the  Act  of  Parliament 
legalizing  the  use  of  the  metric  system  in 
this  country  [England]  gives  the  words 
meter,  liter,  gram,  etc.,  spelled  on  the 
American  plan."  Perhaps  now  that  the 
sanction  of  law  has  been  given  to  this 
spelling,  the  final  er  will  drive  out  the  re 
which  has  usurped  its  place.  In  one  of 
the  last  papers  that  he  wrote,  Lowell  de 
clared  that  "  center  is  no  Americanism  ; 
it  entered  the  language  in  that  shape, 
and  kept  it  at  least  as  late  as  Defoe." 
"  In  the  sixteenth  and  in  the  first  half  of 
the  seventeenth  century,"  says  Professor 


Lounsbury,  "while  both  ways  of  writing 
these  words  existed  side  by  side,  the  ter 
mination  er  is  far  more  common  than 
that  in  re.  The  first  complete  edition  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  was  published  in  1623. 
In  that  work  sepulcher  occurs  thirteen 
times ;  it  is  spelled  eleven  times  with  er. 
Scepter  occurs  thirty -seven  times;  it  is 
not  once  spelled  with  re,  but  always  with 
er.  Center  occurs  twelve  times,  and  in 
nine  instances  out  of  the  twelve  it  ends  in 
er"  So  we  see  that  this  so-called  "Amer 
ican  spelling  "  is  fully  warranted  by  the 
history  of  the  English  language.  It  is 
amusing  to  note  how  often  a  wider  and 
a  deeper  study  of  English  will  reveal  that 
what  is  suddenly  denounced  in  Great 
Britain  as  the  very  latest  Americanism, 
whether  this  be  a  variation  in  speech  or 
in  spelling,  is  shown  to  be  really  a  sur 
vival  of  a  previous  usage  of  our  language, 
and  authorized  by  a  host  of  precedents. 

Of  course  it  is  idle  to  kick  against  the 
pricks  of  progress,  and  no  doubt  in  due 
season  Great  Britain  and  her  colonial  de 
pendencies  will  be  content  again  to  spell 
words  that  end  in  er  as  Shakespeare  and 
Ben  Jonson  and  Spenser  spelled  them. 
But  when  we  get  so  far  towards  the  or- 


thographic  millennium  that  we  all  spell 
sepulcher,  the  ghost  of  Thomas  Campbell 
will  groan  within  the  grave  at  the  havoc 
then  wrought  in  the  final  line  of  "  Hohen- 
linden,"  which  will  cease  to  end  with  even 
the  outward  semblance  of  a  rhyme  to  the 
eye.  We  all  know  that 

"  On  Linden,  when  the  sun  was  low, 
All  bloodless  lay  the  untrodden  snow, 
And  dark  as  winter  was  the  flow 
Of  Iser,  rolling  rapidly," 

and  those  of  us  who  have  persevered  may 
remember  that  with  one  exception  every 
fourth  line  of  Campbell's  poem  ends  with 
aj/— the  words  are  rapidly,  scenery,  rev 
elry,  artillery,  canopy,  and  chivalry — not 
rhymes  of  surpassing  distinction,  any  of 
them,  but  perhaps  passable  to  a  reader 
who  will  humor  the  final  syllable.  The 
one  exception  is  the  final  line  of  the' 
poem — 

"Shall  be  a  soldier's  sepulchre." 

To  no  man's  ear  did  sepulchre  ever  rhyme 
justly  with  chivalry  and  canopy  and  ar- 
tillery,  although  Campbell  may  have  so 
contorted  his  vision  that  he  evoked  the 
dim  spook  of  a  rhyme  in  his  mind's  eye. 


4^ 


A  rhyme  to  the  eye  is  a  sorry  thing  at 
best,  and  it  is  sorriest  when  it  depends 
on  an  inaccurate  and  evanescent  orthog 
raphy. 

Dr.  Johnson  was  as  illogical  in  his  keep 
ing  in  and  leaving  out  of  the  u  in  words 
like  honor  and  governor  as  he  was  in  many 
other  things;  and  the  makers  of  later 
dictionaries  have  departed  widely  from 
his  practice,  those  in  Great  Britain  still 
halting  half-way,  while  those  in  the  Unit 
ed  States  have  gone  on  to  the  bitter  end. 
The  illogic  of  the  great  lexicographer  is 
shown  in  his  omission  of  the  u  from  ex 
terior  and  posterior,  and  his  retention  of 
it  in  the  kindred  words  intertour  and  ante- 
riour ;  this,  indeed,  seems  like  wilful  per 
versity,  and  justifies  Hood's  merry  jest 
about  "  Dr.  Johnson's  Contradictionary." 
The  half-way  measures  of  later  British 
lexicographers  are  shown  in  their  omis 
sion  of  the  u  from  words  which  Dr.  John 
son  spelled  emperour,  governour,  oratour, 
horrour,  and  dolour,  while  still  retaining 
it  in  favour  and  honour  and  a  few  others. 

The  reason  for  his  disgust  generally 
given  by  the  London  man  of  letters  who 
is  annoyed  by  the  "  American  spelling"  of 
honor  and  favor  is  that  these  words  are 


not  derived  directly  from  the  Latin,  but 
indirectly  through  the  French ;  this  is 
the  plea  put  forward  by  the  late  Arch 
bishop  Trench.  Even  if  this  plea  were 
pertinent,  the  application  of  this  theory 
is  not  consistent  in  current  British  or 
thography,  which  prescribes  the  omission 
of  the  u  from  error  and  emperor,  and  its 
retention  in  colour  and  honour — although 
all  four  words  are  alike  derived  from  the 
Latin  through  the  French.  And  this  plea 
fails  absolutely  to  account  for  the  u  which 
the  British  insist  on  preserving  in  har 
bour  and  in  neighbour,  words  not  derived 
from  the  Latin  at  all,  whether  directly 
or  indirectly  through  the  French.  An 
American  may  well  ask,  "  If  the  u  in  hon 
our  teaches  etymology,  what  does  the  11 
in  harbour  teach  ?"  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  u  in  harbour  teaches  a  false  ety 
mology  ;  and  there  is  no  doubt  also  that 
the  u  in  honour  has  been  made  to  teach  a 
false  etymology,  for  Trench's  derivation  of 
this  final  our  from  the  French  eur  is  ab 
surd,  as  the  old  French  was  our,  and  some 
times  ur,  sometimes  even  or.  Pseudo- 
philology  of  this  sort  is  no  new  thing. 
Professor  Max  Miiller  tells  us  that  the 
Roman  prigs  used  to  spell  cena  (to  show 

4 


their  knowledge  of   Greek),  coena,  as  if 
the  word  were  somehow  connected  with 

Koivrj. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  it  in  honour  sug 
gests  a  false  etymology;  so  does  the  ue 
in  tongue,  and  the^  in  sovereign,  and  the  c 
in  scent,  and  the  s  in  island,  and  the  mp 
in  comptroller,  and  the  h  in  rhyme ;  and 
there  are  many  more  of  our  ordinary  or 
thographies  which  are  quite  as  mislead 
ing  from  a  philological  point  of  view.  As 
Professor  Hadley  mildly  put  it,  "  our  com 
mon  spelling  is  often  an  untrustworthy 
guide  to  etymology."  But  why  should  we 
expect  or  desire  spelling  to  be  a  guide  to 
etymology  ?  If  it  is  to  be  a  guide  at  all, 
we  may  fairly  insist  on  its  being  trust 
worthy,  and  so  we  cannot  help  thinking 
scorn  of  those  who  insist  on  retaining  a 
superfluous  u  in  honour. 

But  why  should  orthography  be  made 
subservient  to  etymology?  What  have 
the  two  things  in  common?  They  exist 
for  wholly  different  ends,  to  be  attained 
by  wholly  different  means.  To  bend  ei 
ther  from  its  own  work  to  the  aid  of  the 
other  is  to  impair  the  utility  of  both. 
This  truth  is  recognized  by  all  etymolo 
gists,  and  by  all  students  of  language,  al- 


though  it  has  not  yet  found  acceptance 
among  men  of  letters,  who  are  rarely 
students  of  language  in  the  scientific 
sense.  "  It  may  be  observed,"  Mr.  Sweet 
declares,  "  that  it  is  mainly  among  the 
class  of  half-taught  dabblers  in  philology 
that  etymological  spelling  has  found  its 
supporters ;"  and  he  goes  on  to  say  that 
"all  true  philologists  and  philological 
bodies  have  uniformly  denounced  it  as  a 
monstrous  absurdity  both  from  a  prac 
tical  and  a  scientific  point  of  view."  I 
should  never  dare  to  apply  to  the  late 
Archbishop  Trench  and  the  London  jour 
nalists  who  echo  his  errors  so  harsh  a 
phrase  as  Mr.  Sweet's  "  half-taught  dab 
blers  in  philology;"  but  when  a  fellow- 
Englishman  uses  it  perhaps  I  may  vent 
ure  to  quote  it  without  reproach. 

As  I  have  said  before,  the  alleged 
"  American  spelling "  differs  but  very 
slightly  from  that  which  prevails  in  Eng 
land.  A  wandering  New-Yorker  who 
rambles  through  London  is  able  to  col 
lect  now  and  again  evidences  of  ortho 
graphic  survivals  which  give  him  a  sud 
den  sense  of  being  in  an  older  country 
than  his  own.  I  have  seen  a  man  whose 
home  was  near  Gramercy  Park  stop  short 


in  the  middle  of  a  little  street  in  Mayfair, 
and  point  with  ecstatic  delight  to  the  strip 
of  paper  across  the  glass  door  of  a  bar  pro 
claiming  that  CYDER  was  sold  within. 
I  have  seen  the  same  man  thrill  with  pure 
joy  before  the  shop  of  a  chymtst  in  the 
window  of  which  corn-plaisters  were  of 
fered  for  sale.  And  this  same  New-York 
er  was  carried  back  across  the  years  when 
he  noted  the  extra  g  in  the  British  wag 
gon — an  orthographic  fifth  wheel,  if  ever 
there  was  one  ;  he  smiled  at  the  k  which 
lingers  at  the  end  of  the  British  alma 
nack  ;  he  wondered  why  a  British  house 
should  have  storeys  when  an  American 
house  has  stories ;  and  he  disliked  in 
tensely  the  wanton  e  wherewith  British 
printers  have  recently  disfigured  form 
which  in  the  latest  London  typographi 
cal  vocabularies  appears  as  forme.  This 
e  in  form  is  a  gratuitous  addition,  and 
therefore  contrary  to  the  trend  of  spell 
ing  reform,  which  aims  at  the  suppression 
of  all  arbitrary  and  needless  letters.  Most 
of  the  American  modifications  of  the 
Johnsonian  orthography  have  been  labor- 
saving  devices,  like  the  dropping  of  u  in 
color  and  of  one  /  in  traveler,  in  an  effort 
at  simplification,  and  in  accord  with  the 


irresistible  tendency  of  mankind  to  cut 
across  lots. 

The  so-called  "American  spelling"  dif 
fers  from  the  spelling  which  obtains  in 
England  only  in  so  far  as  it  has  yielded 
a  little  more  readily  to  the  forces  which 
make  for  progress,  for  uniformity,  for 
logic,  for  common-sense.  But  just  how 
fortuitous  and  chaotic  the  condition  of 
English  spelling  is  nowadays  both  in 
Great  Britain  and  in  the  United  States 
no  man  knows  who  has  not  taken  the 
trouble  to  investigate  for  himself.  In 
England,  the  reactionary  orthography  of 
Samuel  Johnson  is  no  longer  accepted  by 
all.  In  America,  the  revolutionary  or 
thography  of  Noah  Webster  has  been  re 
ceded  from  even  by  his  own  inheritors. 
There  is  no  standard,  no  authority,  not 
even  that  of  a  powerful,  resolute,  and 
domineering  personality. 

Perhaps  the  attitude  of  philologists 
towards  the  present  spelling  of  the  Eng 
lish  language,  and  their  opinion  of  those 
who  are  up  in  arms  in  defence  of  it,  have 
never  been  more  tersely  stated  than  in 
Professor  Lounsbury's  recent  and  most 
admirable  Studies  in  Chaucer,  a  work 
which  I  should  term  eminently  scholarly, 


54 


if  that  phrase  did  not  perhaps  give  a  false 
impression  of  a  book  wherein  the  results 
of  learning  are  set  forth  with  the  most 
adroit  literary  art,  and  with  an  uninsist- 
ent  but  omnipresent  humor,  which  is  a 
constant  delight  to  the  reader : 

"  There  is  certainly  nothing  more  con 
temptible  than  our  present  spelling,  un 
less  it  be  the  reasons  usually  given  for 
clinging  to  it.  The  divorce  which  has 
unfortunately  almost  always  existed  be 
tween  English  letters  and  English  schol 
arship  makes  nowhere  a  more  pointed 
exhibition  of  itself  than  in  the  comments 
which  men  of  real  literary  ability  make 
upon  proposals  to  change  or  modify  the 
cast-iron  framework  in  which  our  words 
are  now  clothed.  On  one  side  there  is  an 
absolute  agreement  of  view  on  the  part  of 
those  who  are  authorized  by  their  knowl 
edge  of  the  subject  to  pronounce  an  opin 
ion.  These  are  well  aware  that  the  pres 
ent  orthography  hides  the  history  of  the 
word  instead  of  revealing  it ;  that  it  is  a 
stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  derivation 
or  of  pronunciation  instead  of  a  guide  to 
it ;  that  it  is  not  in  any  sense  a  growth  or 
development,  but  a  mechanical  malfor 
mation,  which  owes  its  existence  to  the 


ignorance  of  early  printers  and  the  ne 
cessity  of  consulting  the  convenience  of 
printing-offices.  This  consensus  of  schol 
ars  makes  the  slightest  possible  impres 
sion  upon  men  of  letters  throughout  the 
whole  great  Anglo-Saxon  community. 
There  is  hardly  one  of  them  who  is  not 
calmly  confident  of  the  superiority  of  his 
opinion  to  that  of  the  most  famous  spe 
cial  students  who  have  spent  years  in  ex 
amining  the  subject.  There  is  hardly  one 
of  them  who  does  not  fancy  he  is  manifest 
ing  a  noble  conservatism  by  holding  fast 
to  some  spelling  peculiarly  absurd,  and 
thereby  maintaining  a  bulwark  against 
the  ruin  of  the  tongue.  There  is  hardly 
one  of  them  who  has  any  hesitation  in  dis 
cussing  the  question  in  its  entirety,  while 
every  word  he  utters  shows  that  he  does 
not  even  understand  its  elementary  prin 
ciples.  There  would  be  something  thor 
oughly  comic  in  turning  into  a  fierce  inter 
national  dispute  the  question  of  spelling 
honor  without  the  u,  were  it  not  for  the 
depression  which  every  student  of  the  lan 
guage  cannot  well  help  feeling  in  contem 
plating  the  hopeless  abysmal  ignorance 
of  the  history  of  the  tongue  which  any 
educated  man  must  first  possess  in  order 


to  become  excited  over  the  subject  at  all." 
{Studies  in  Chaucer,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  265-7.) 

Pronunciation  is  slowly  but  steadily 
changing.  Sometimes  it  is  going  further 
and  further  away  from  the  orthography ; 
for  example,  either  and  neither  are  get 
ting  more  and  more  to  have  in  their  first 
syllable  the  long  /  sound  instead  of  the 
long  e  sound  which  they  had  once.  Some 
times  it  is  being  modified  to  agree  with 
the  orthography;  for  example,  the  older 
pronunciations  of  again  to  rhyme  with 
men,  and  of  been  to  rhyme  with  pin,  in 
which  I  was  carefully  trained  as  a  boy, 
seem  to  me  to  be  giving  way  before  a 
pronunciation  in  exact  accord  with  the 
spelling,  again  to  rhyme  with  pain,  and 
been  to  rhyme  with  seen.  These  two  il 
lustrations  are  from  the  necessarily  cir 
cumscribed  experience  of  a  single  ob 
server,  and  the  observation  of  others 
may  not  bear  me  out  in  my  opinion ;  but 
though  the  illustrations  fall  to  the  ground, 
the  main  assertion,  that  pronunciation  is 
changing,  is  indisputable. 

No  doubt  the  change  is  less  rapid  than 
it  was  before  the  invention  of  printing; 
far  less  rapid  than  it  was  before  the  days 
of  the  public-school  and  of  the  morning 


57 


newspaper.  There  are  variations  of  pro 
nunciation  in  different  parts  of  the  United 
States  and  of  Great  Britain  as  there  are 
variations  of  vocabulary ;  but  in  the  fut 
ure  there  will  be  a  constantly  increasing 
tendency  for  these  variations  to  disap 
pear.  There  are  irresistible  forces  making 
for  uniformity  —  forces  which  are  crush 
ing  out  Platt-Deutsch  in  Germany,  Pro- 
vengal  in  France..  Romansch  in  Switzer 
land.  There  is  a  desire  to  see  a  standard 
set  up  to  which  all  may  strive  to  conform. 
In  France  a  standard  of  pronunciation  is 
found  at  the  performances  of  the  Comedie 
Frangaise  ;  and  in  Germany,  what  is  al 
most  a  standard  of  vocabulary  has  been 
set  in  what  is  now  known  as  Buhne- 
Deutsch. 

In  France  the  Academy  was  constitu 
ted  chiefly  to  be  a  guardian  of  the  lan 
guage;  and  the  Academy,  properly  con 
servative  as  it  needs  must  be,  is  engaged 
in  a  slow  reform  of  French  orthography, 
yielding  to  the  popular  demand  deco 
rously  and  judiciously.  By  official  action, 
also,  the  orthography  of  German  has  been 
simplified  and  made  more  logical  and 
brought  into  closer  relation  with  modern 
pronunciation.  Even  more  thorough  re- 


forms  have  been  carried  through  in  Italy, 
in  Spain,  and  in  Holland.  Yet  neither 
French  nor  German,  not  Italian,  Spanish, 
or  Dutch,  stood  half  as  much  in  need  of 
the  broom  of  reform  as  English,  for  in  no 
one  of  these  languages  were  there  so 
many  dark  corners  which  needed  clean 
ing  out;  in  no  one  of  them  the  difference 
between  orthography  and  pronunciation 
as  wide ;  and  in  no  one  of  them  was  the 
accepted  spelling  debased  by  numberless 
false  etymologies.  Sometimes  it  seems 
as  though  our  orthography  is  altogether 
vile ;  that  it  is  most  intolerable  and  not 
to  be  endured ;  that  it  calls  not  for  the 
broom  of  reform,  but  rather  for  the  be 
som  of  destruction. 

For  any  elaborate  and  far-reaching 
scheme  of  spelling  reform,  seemingly,  the 
time  has  not  yet  come,  although,  for  all 
we  know,  we  may  be  approaching  it  all 
unwittingly,  as  few  of  us  in  1860  foresaw 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation  of  1863. 
In  the  mean  while,  what  is  needed  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic,  in  the  United  States 
as  well  as  in  Great  Britain,  is  a  conviction 
that  the  existing  orthography  of  English 
is  not  sacred,  and  that  to  tamper  with  it 
is  not  high-treason.  What  is  needed  is 


the  consciousness  that  neither  Samuel 
Johnson  nor  Noah  Webster  compiled  his 
dictionary  under  direct  inspiration.  What 
is  needed  is  an  awakening  to  the  fact  that 
our  spelling,  so  far  from  being  immacu 
late  at  its  best,  is,  at  its  best,  hardly  less  ab 
surd  than  the  hap-hazard,  rule-of-thumb, 
funnily  phonetic  spelling  of  Artemus 
Ward  and  of  Josh  Billings.  What  is  need 
ed  is  anything  which  will  break  up  the 
lethargy  of  satisfaction  with  the  accepted 
orthography,  and  help  to  open  the  eyes 
of  readers  and  writers  to  the  stupidity  of 
the  present  system  and  tend  to  make 
them  discontented  with  it. 

So  the  few  and  slight  divergences  be 
tween  the  orthography  obtaining  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  orthography  obtaining  in 
the  United  States  are  not  to  be  deplored. 
The  cyder  on  the  door  of  the  London  bar 
room  and  the  catalog  in  the  pages  of  the 
New  York  Library  Journal  \>o\\\  subserve 
the  useful  purpose  of  making  people  alive 
to  the  possibilities  of  an  amended  orthog 
raphy.  Thus  the  so-called  "  American 
spelling  "  helps  along  a  good  cause — and 
so,  also,  do  the  British  assaults  upon  it. 

1892 


THE   LITERARY   INDEPENDENCE 
OF  THE   UNITED   STATES 

,N  the  evening  of  the  Tuesday 
following  the  first  Monday 
of  next  November,  after  the 
citizens  of  the  several  States 
shall  have  cast  their  ballots 
for  the  candidates  of  their  choice,  the 
boys  of  New  York,  in  accord  with  their 
immemorial  custom  on  election  night, 
will  illuminate  the  streets  of  the  city  with 
countless  bonfires,  not  knowing,  any  of 
them,  that  they  are  thus  commemorating 
Guy  Faux  and  the  discovery  of  the  Gun 
powder  Plot.  And  yet  such  is  the  fact, 
as  Doctor  Eggleston  has  ascertained  be 
yond  all  question.  What  British  boys 
are  pleased  to  remember  on  the  5th  of 
November,  American  boys  have  forgot 
ten,  although  they  keep  alive  the  memo 
rial  fires  on  the  evening  of  the  Tuesday 
following  the  first  Monday  in  November, 


Gi 


be  that  the  5th  or  not,  as  the  almanac 
may  declare.  In  like  manner  the  "  dress 
ing  up  as  a  Guy  "  still  survives  also  in 
New  York,  in  the  parades  of  the  "  fantas- 
ticals  "  on  Thanksgiving  Day  —  the  last 
Thursday  in  November.  So  hard  is  it 
for  old  customs  to  die  out.  Perhaps  the 
British  5th  of  November  was  in  its  turn 
a  survival  of  some  pagan  rite  ignorantly 
lingering  as  late  as  the  Gunpowder  Plot, 
and  thereafter  identified  with  the  fate  of 
Guy  Faux. 

We  cannot  help  being  the  descendants 
of  our  ancestors ;  and  no  tariff,  however 
high  and  however  complicated  by  ad 
valorem  duties,  can  keep  out  of  these 
United  States  the  traditions,  the  beliefs, 
the  habits,  the  feelings  of  the  immigrants 
whose  children  we  are.  That  those  who 
have  left  a  great  country,  England  or 
France  or  Germany,  should  look  back  to 
that  country  as  the  centre  of  light,  is  nat 
ural — perhaps  it  is  inevitable.  But  that 
their  children  should  continue  to  do  so, 
natural  enough  for  a  while,  is  not  inev 
itable.  Even  though  the  colonist  suc 
ceeds  in  breaking  the  political  tie  which 
binds  him  to  the  country  whence  his 
fathers  came,  there  is  no  real  independ- 


ence  unless  he  lays  aside  also  the  habit 
of  intellectual  deference ;  and  that  is  as 
arduous,  as  difficult,  and  as  long  a  task  as 
any  one  ever  undertook.  None  the  less 
is  it  absolutely  necessary  if  a  people  is  to 
speak  with  its  own  voice  and  not  with 
borrowed  tongues — if  its  independence  is 
to  be  complete  and  final. 

In  Mr.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge's  interest 
ing  and  stimulant  volume  called  Studies 
in  History  there  is  no  essay  more  inter 
esting  or  more  stimulating  than  that  on 
"  Colonialism  in  the  United  States."  In 
two-score  pages  Mr.  Lodge  distinguishes 
colonialism  from  provincialism,  with 
which  it  is  sometimes  confounded,  and 
then  shows  how  the  thirteen  United 
States,  having  once  been  colonies,  still 
breathed  the  colonial  spirit  long  after 
their  political  independence  was  fully  es 
tablished.  He  recalls  the  fact  that  one 
half  of  the  people  disliked  Washington's 
proclamation  of  neutrality  as  between 
France  and  Great  Britain,  because  it 
seemed  "  hostile  to  France,"  while  the 
other  approved  of  it  for  the  same  reason. 
We  Americans  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century  were  still  engaged  in  fighting 
over  again  all  the  battles  of  Europe. 


But  Washington  was  an  American,  not  a 
European,  and  so  was  Hamilton;  and 
they  kept  us  true  to  the  line  of  our  na 
tional  development. 

Even  before  the  Revolution,  when  "  the 
travelled  American,  the  petit -maitre  of 
the  colonies,"  so  Hawthorne  reminds  us, 
was  "the  ape  of  London  foppery,  as  the 
newspaper  was  the  semblance  of  the  Lon 
don  journals  "  — even  then  there  were 
Americans,  like  Franklin,  for  example, 
who  had  nothing  of  the  colonist  about 
them,  who  were  at  once  cosmopolitan 
and  American.  Mr.  Lodge  is  right  in 
calling  Franklin's  Autobiography  "the 
corner-stone,  the  first  great  work  of 
American  literature." 

After  the  War  of  1812  the  politics  of 
the  United  States  ceased  to  depend  in 
any  way  on  the  politics  of  Europe ;  and 
our  elections  began  to  turn  solely  on 
questions  of  domestic  policy.  So  our 
commerce  and  our  manufactures  freed 
themselves  from  reliance  on  England  or 
France.  An  unending  succession  of  in 
ventions  showed  the  ingenuity  of  the 
American.  In  law,  the  autonomy  of  the 
separate  States  permitted  a  variety  of 
juristic  experiment,  the  best  results  of 


•'4 


which  have  been  copied  now  in  the  legis 
lature  of  Great  Britain.  "  But  the  colo 
nial  spirit " — to  quote  Mr.  Lodge  again 
— "cast  out  from  our  politics  and  fast 
disappearing  from  business  and  the  pro 
fessions,  still  clung  closely  to  literature, 
which  must  always  be  the  best  and 
last  expression  of  a  national  mode  of 
thought." 

The  colonial  attitude  in  literature  was 
unwittingly  encouraged  by  Congress, 
which,  by  refusing  to  pass  an  interna 
tional  copyright  bill,  and  thus  secure  to 
the  British  author  the  control  of  his  own 
works,  permitted  the  foreigner  to  be  plun 
dered,  and  forced  the  native  author  to 
sell  his  wares  in  competition  with  stolen 
goods.  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  de 
clared — in  his  work  on  Popular  Govern 
ment  (p.  247)  —  that  the  neglect  to  give 
copyright  to  foreign  "writers  has  con 
demned  the  whole  American  community 
to  a  literary  servitude  unparalleled  in 
the  history  of  thought."  This,  of  course, 
is  the  violent  over-statement  of  an  enemy ; 
but  there  was  a  percentage  of  truth  in  it 
once.  To  show  just  what  the  American 
literary  attitude  was  in  the  early  years  of 
this  century,  Mr.  Lodge  instances  Coop- 


er's  first  novel,  Precaution,  now  wholly 
forgotten,  and  fortunately,  for  its  charac 
ters,  its  scenery,  "  its  conventional  phrases 
were  all  English ;  worst  and  most  ex 
traordinary  of  all,  it  professed  to  be  by 
an  English  author,  and  was  received  on 
that  theory  without  suspicion."  And 
Mr.  Lodge  tersely  sums  up  the  situa 
tion  by  saying  that  "the  first  step  of  an 
American  entering  upon  a  literary  career 
was  to  pretend  to  be  an  Englishman  in 
order  that  he  might  win  the  approval, 
not  of  Englishmen,  but  of  his  own  coun 
trymen." 

Cooper  was  too  good  an  American  to 
be  content  with  the  cast-off  garments  of 
British  novelists;  and  in  1821,  a  year  af 
ter  the  appearance  of  Precaution,  he  pub 
lished  The  Spy,  and  never  thereafter  was 
there  any  need  for  an  American  novelist 
to  masquerade  as  an  Englishman.  Yet 
his  fellow-countrymen  thought  to  com 
pliment  Cooper  by  calling  him  "the  Amer 
ican  Scott."  And  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century  later,  when  Lowell  put  forth 
his  Fable  for  Critics'  there  was  abundant 
colonialism  in  our  literature,  if  we  may 
accept  the  satirist's  picture  of  the  mass- 
meeting  of 


" 


"The  American  Bulwers,  Disraelis,  and  Scotts. 

By  the  way,  'tis  a  fact  that  displays  what  profusions 
Of  all  kinds  of  greatness  bless  free  institutions, 
That  while  the  Old  World  has  produced  barely  eight 
Of  such  poets  as  all  men  agree  to  call  great, 
And  of  other  great  characters  nearly  a  score  — 
One  might  safely  say  less  than  that  rather  than  more — 
With  you  every  year  a  whole  crop  is  begotten, 
They're  as  much  of  a  staple  as  corn  is  or  cotton; 
Why,  there's  scarcely  a  huddle  of  log-huts  and  shanties 
That   has   not    brought   forth    its   own    Miltons   and 

Dantes ; 
I    myself    know     ten     Byrons,  one    Coleridge,  three 

Shelleys, 

Two  Raphaels,  six  Titians  (I  think),  one  Apelles, 
Leonardos  and  Rubenses  plenty  as  lichens, 
One  (but  that  one  is  plenty)  American  Dickens, 
A  whole  flock  of  Lambs,  any  number  of  Tennysons — 
In  short,  if  a  man  has  the  luck  to  have  any  sons, 
He  may  feel  pretty  certain  that  one  out  of  twain 
Will  be  some  very  great  person  over  again." 

After  Cooper  came  Hawthorne  and 
Poe,  intensely  American,  both  of  them, 
although  in  different  fashion.  In  due 
season  Mrs.  Stowe  brought  out  one  book 
which  set  forth  fearlessly  a  situation  un 
deniably  (and  most  unfortunately)  Amer 
ican.  Then  came  the  war,  which  stiffened 
our  national  consciousness,  and  by  giving 
us  something  to  be  proud  of,  killed  the 
earlier  habit  of  brag.  Among  later  story 
tellers  who  study  American  life  as  it  is, 


and  without  any  taint  of  Briticism,  are 
the  author  of  The  Adventures  of  Huckle 
berry  Finn,  the  author  of  The  Rise  of  Si 
las  Lapham,  the  author  of  The  Hoosier 
Schoolmaster,  and  the  author  of  Old  Creole 
Days,  all  aggressively  American,  all  de 
void  of  the  slightest  suggestion  of  coloni 
alism,  all  possessing  a  wholesome  mistrust 
of  British  traditions,  British  standards, 
and  British  methods.  Some  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen  and  contemporaries  com 
plained  that  Cooper  was  not  proud  of 
being  called  "  the  American  Scott ;"  and 
if  we  want  to  see  how  far  we  have  trav 
elled  away  from  colonialism  of  this  sort 
we  have  only  to  imagine  the  laughter 
with  which  Mark  Twain  would  greet  any 
critic  who  thought  to  compliment  him 
by  calling  him  the  American  Burnand  ! 

That  this  is  an  enormous  gain  is  obvi 
ous  enough.  American  authors  are  now 
writing  for  their  fellow-countrymen  and 
about  their  fellow-countrymen.  If,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  declared,  "  the  end  and 
aim  of  all  literature  is,  if  one  considers  it 
attentively,  nothing  but  that — a  criticism 
of  life,"  then  the  literature  likely  to  be 
most  useful,  most  invigorating,  and  most 
satisfactory  to  Americans  should  be  a 


68 


criticism  of  life  in  America.  Whether 
or  not  the  spirit  of  colonialism  still  sur 
vives  in  these  United  States  sufficiently 
to  make  the  majority  of  readers  here  pre 
fer  books  of  British  authorship  is  a  ques 
tion  hardly  worth  asking,  it  seems  to  me, 
although  there  are  some,  both  in  London 
and  in  New  York,  who  would  answer  it 
in  the  affirmative.  To  those  of  us  who 
happened  to  be  in  London  during  the 
closing  days  of  our  long  struggle  for  the 
Copyright  act  of  1891  it  was  obvious  that 
many  British  authors  believed  that  un 
bounded  affluence  was  about  to  burst 
upon  them.  They  accepted  Sir  Henry 
Maine's  view  as  to  the  literary  poverty 
of  America,  and  apparently  did  not  know 
that  there  were  American  authors  stand 
ing  ready  to  supply  the  American  de 
mand  as  soon  as  they  should  be  relieved 
from  an  enforced  competition  with  stolen 
goods. 

these  British  authors  thought  that  the 
passage  of  the  act  opened  a  boundless 
field  for  them  to  enter  in  and  take  pos 
session  of;  and  no  doubt  some  of  the 
American  opponents  of  the  bill  were  of 
the  same  opinion.  Of  course  we  all  see 
now,  what  some  of  us  who  had  studied 


the  conditions  of  the  book-trade  foresaw, 
that  the  instant  result  of  the  Copyright 
act  must  needs  be  a  decrease  in  the  num 
ber  of  books  of  British  authorship  sold 
in  the  United  States.  As  soon  as  there 
was  only  one  authorized  publisher  en 
gaged  in  pushing  a  British  book  in  Amer 
ica,  in  the  place  of  a  dozen  unauthorized 
publishers  forced  to  a  frantic  and  cut 
throat  competition,  the  British  book  had 
to  sell  on  its  merits  alone,  without  the  aid 
of  any  premium  of  cheapness.  As  soon 
as  all  books  had  to  be  paid  for  by  the 
publisher,  the  book  of  native  authorship 
had  its  natural  preference ;  and  now  the 
inferior  and  doubtful  books  of  foreign 
authorship  are  ceasing  to  be  reprinted 
here.  This  is  a  tendency  which  will 
increase  with  time,  and  very  properly, 
since  every  nation  ought  to  be  able  to 
supply  its  own  second-rate  books,  and  to 
borrow  from  abroad  only  the  best  that 
the  foreigner  has  to  offer  it.  And  it  can 
not  be  said  too  often  or  too  emphatically 
that  the  British  are  foreigners,  and  that 
their  ideals  in  life,  in  literature,  in  poli 
tics,  in  taste,  in  art,  are  not  our  ideals. 

The  decrease  in  the  proportion  of  Brit 
ish  books  published  in  America,  sharply 


accelerated,  no  doubt,  by  the  Copyright 
act  of  1891,  has  been  going  on  ever  since 
Cooper  published  The  Spy,  now  more 
than  threescore  years  and  ten  ago.  It 
occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be  useful 
to  show  exactly  the  rate  at  which  the 
American  book  had  been  gaining  upon 
the  British  book,  and  to  discover  whether 
the  native  author  had  overtaken  the  for 
eigner  or  was  likely  to  do  so.  To  this 
end  I  have  considered  the  books  issued 
during  the  past  thirty  years  by  two  of 
the  leading  publishing  houses  of  America : 
Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers,  and  Messrs. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Company.  Messrs. 
Harper  &  Brothers  have  always  main 
tained  very  close  relations  with  the  lead 
ing  authors  of  Great  Britain ;  and  to  them, 
far  more  than  to  any  one  other  American 
publishing  house,  have  the  most  popular 
writers  of  England  intrusted  the  Amer 
ican  editions  of  their  works.  Messrs. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  £  Company,  on  the 
other  hand,  succeeding  to  the  firms  of 
Ticknor  &  Fields,  and  of  Fields,  Osgood 
&  Company,  have  always  devoted  them 
selves  more  especially  to  books  of  Amer 
ican  authorship.  These  two  great  houses 
represent  different  traditions,  and  it 


seemed  to  me  therefore  that  a  compari 
son  of  their  present  catalogues  with  their 
catalogues  of  thirty  years  ago  would  not 
be  without  profit.  I  have  to  thank  both 
these  firms  for  their  kindly  assistance, 
without  which  it  would  have  been  im 
possible  for  me  to  prepare  the  present 
paper. 

I  have  been  furnished  with  a  list  of 
the  books  published  by  Messrs.  Harper  & 
Brothers  in  the  years  1861,  1871,  1881,  and 
1891  ;  and  I  propose  to  show  how  the 
book  of  American  authorship  has  gained 
on  the  book  of  British  authorship  in 
three  decades.  From  all  the  lists  I  begin 
by  discarding  the  classic  authors  of  our 
language.  There  was  scarcely  any  Amer 
ican  literature  before  Cooper's  Spy,  and 
of  course  all  the  glorious  roll  of  English 
authors  who  wrote  before  1776  are  as 
much  a  part  of  our  having  as  the  com 
mon  law  itself.  For  kindred  reasons  I 
throw  out  all  new  editions  and  all  text 
books  and  all  school-books. 

Making  these  deductions  (and  they  nat 
urally  decrease  very  much  the  apparent 
number  of  books  published  during  any 
one  year),  we  find  that  in  the  year  1861 
Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers  issued  twen- 


ty-four  books,  of  which  fourteen  were  of 
British  authorship  (including  George  El 
iot's  Silas  Marner}  and  seven  of  Ameri 
can  authorship  (including  Motley's  United 
Netherlands  and  Mr.  Curtis's  Trumps)  ; 
three  books  sent  forth  by  them  were 
translated  from  foreign  languages. 

In  1871  Messrs  Harper  &  Brothers 
published  fifty-seven  books,  and  of  these 
thirty -six  were  of  British  authorship, 
twenty  were  by  American  writers,  and 
one  was  a  translation. 

In  1881  they  sent  forth  ninety -eight 
books,  of  which  sixty-six  were  by  British 
authors  (including  some  forty-seven  num 
bers  of  the  Franklin  Square  Library)  and 
twenty  -  six  were  by  American  authors, 
while  six  were  translations  from  foreign 
languages.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  1881 
we  were  in  the  very  thick  of  piracy,  and 
that  Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers  were  en 
gaged  in  pushing  vigorously  the  Franklin 
Square  Library,  which  they  had  devised 
as  a  weapon  to  fight  the  reprinters  with. 

In  1891  the  Copyright  act  became  op 
erative  on  the  ist  of  July.  During  that 
year  Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers  issued 
seventy-six  books,  of  which  twenty-seven 
were  of  British  authorship  and  forty-one 


of  American,  while  eight  were  transla 
tions.  It  is  to  be  noted  here  that  the 
translations  of  1891  were  nearly  all  made 
in  America,  while  those  of  1861  and  of 
1 88 1  were  the  work  of  British  writers. 
In  the  books  of  British  authorship  are  in 
cluded  all  those  issued  only  in  paper  cov 
ers  in  the  new  Franklin  Square  Library. 
Of  course,  Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers  is 
sued  ever}r  year  many  more  books  than  I 
have  counted  ;  but  I  have,  as  I  said,  omit 
ted  all  new  editions,  all  school-books,  and 
all  reprints  of  the  classics  of  our  own  or 
any  other  language,  as  not  falling  within 
the  scope  of  this  inquiry.  To  decide  ex 
actly  what  to  include  or  to  exclude  was 
not  always  easy,  but  I  have  tried  to  be 
consistent,  and  I  believe  that  the  figures 
here  given  are  fairly  accurate.  They 
show  that  a  house  which  published  in 
1861  twice  as  many  books  of  British 
authorship  as  of  American,  published  in 
1891  one-third  more  books  of  American 
authorship  than  of  British.  They  show 
also  that  the  actual  number  of  American 
books  issued  by  this  firm  increased  with 
every  decade,  and  was  in  1891  almost  six 
times  as  large  as  it  was  thirty  years  be 
fore. 


The  present  house  of  Houghton,  Mif- 
flin  &  Company  is  descended  on  one  side 
from  the  firm  of  Hurd  &  Houghton,  and 
on  the  other  from  the  firm  which  was 
successively  William  D.  Ticknor  &  Com 
pany,  Ticknor  &  Fields,  Fields,  Osgood  & 
Company,  and  James  R.  Osgood  &  Com 
pany.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  have 
not  been  able  to  get  a  complete  cata 
logue  of  the  books  published  by  Ticknor  & 
Fields  in  i86i,but  I  have  found  certain 
lists  of  books  published  by  them  about 
that  time :  one  of  these  lists  contains 
four  American  books,  three  British,  and 
one  translation  from  a  foreign  tongue ;  in 
another  there  are  ten  books  of  British 
authorship  and  ten  of  American  ;  and  in 
a  third  there  are  six  British  authors  rep 
resented  and  eight  American. 

In  1871  the  firm  was  James  R.  Osgood 
&  Company,  and  the  proportion  of  books 
of  American  authorship  was  steadily  in 
creasing.  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  a 
full  and  complete  list,  but  I  know  that 
the  house  published  that  year  at  least 
twenty-eight  books  by  American  authors, 
ten  by  British  writers,  and  three  trans 
lated  from  a  modern  language. 

In  1 88 1  the  firm  had  become  Hough- 


ton,  Mifflin  &  Company,  and  it  has  kind 
ly  provided  me  with  an  accurate  list 
of  its  publications  during  these  twelve 
months.  Omitting,  as  before,  all  new  edi 
tions,  we  find  that  the  house  issued  that 
year  thirty -eight  books  by  Americans, 
seven  by  British  authors,  and  eleven  vol 
umes  of  translations. 

In  1891  the  proportion  of  native  works 
still  further  increased.  The  American 
books  published  in  that  year  by  Messrs. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Company  were  six 
ty-nine,  while  the  firm  issued  only  seven 
volumes  by  British  authors  and  two  trans 
lations.  A  comparison  of  these  figures 
with  those  of  thirty  years  before  show 
that  the  predecessors  of  Messrs.  Hough- 
ton,  Mifflin  &  Company  published  in  1861 
about  as  many  books  of  British  author 
ship  as  of  American;  while  in  1891  the 
firm  sent  forth  ten  times  as  many  Amer 
ican  books  as  it  did  British. 

In  going  over  the  lists  of  Messrs.  Har 
per  &  Brothers  and  of  Messrs.  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Company,  I  have  resolutely  cast 
out  of  account  all  school-books,  because 
a  consideration  of  these  might  have  giv 
en  a  false  impression,  since  the  school- 
books  of  all  Americans  who  were  boys 


in  1 86 1  were  already  01  American  author- 
ship.  I  was  a  boy  myself  in  1861,  and  I 
never  saw  a  school-book  of  British  origin 
until  after  I  had  been  in  college  for  a 
year  or  two,  and  then  it  was  only  a  sin 
gle  manual  of  political  economy.  When 
Noah  Webster  issued,  in  1783,  the  first 
part  of  a  Grammatical  Institute  of  the 
English  Language,  afterwards  known  as 
Webster  s  Spelling  Book,  and  as  such  sold 
for  half  a  century  to  the  extent  of  a 
million  copies  a  year,  an  example  was  set 
which  other  American  educators  were 
prompt  to  follow. 

For  nearly  a  hundred  years  now  the 
American  school-boy  has  been  supplied 
with  American  books  suited  to  Ameri 
can  conditions  and  inculcating  American 
ideas.  Nor  is  there  any  likelihood  that 
this  fortunate  condition  will  ever  change. 
The  American  Book  Company,  a  pub 
lishing  firm  formed  by  the  consolidation 
of  four  or  five  of  the  leading  school-book 
houses  of  this  country,  supplies  probably 
four-fifths  of  the  books  used  in  American 
schools.  I  have  recently  made  a  careful 
examination  of  its  complete  classified 
price-list  of  school  and  college  text 
books,  with  the  eminently  satisfactory 


result  of  finding  in  the  first  500  titles  only 
one  book  of  foreign  authorship. 

Perhaps  it  was  in  consequence  of  the 
wholesome  Americanism  imparted  in  the 
school -room  that  American  boys  and 
girls  demanded  other  books  of  American 
authorship.  Certain  it  was  that  the  de 
partment  of  the  publishing  trade  which 
handles  "juveniles,"  as  they  are  called, 
gave  an  early  preference  to  books  de 
scribing  life  in  America  or  from  an  Amer 
ican  point  of  view.  Peter  Parley  was  a 
pioneer,  and  Jacob  Abbott  followed  after ; 
and  I  confess  I  am  sorry  for  the  boys  and 
girls  of  Great  Britain  who  did  not  know 
the  joy  of  travelling  through  Europe  with 
Rollo  and  Uncle  George,  the  omniscient. 
From  my  own  childhood  I  can  recall  only 
one  volume  of  British  origin,  although  of 
American  manufacture ;  it  was  a  sturdy 
tome  called  The  Boys  Own  Book,  and  it 
had  strange  wood-cuts  of  strangely  chub 
by  youths  in  strange  Eton  jackets. 

In  Doctor  Holmes's  paper  on  "  The 
Seasons  "  (to  be  found  in  Pages  from  an 
Old  Volume  of  Life),  it  is  made  evident 
that  the  American  children  of  the  second 
decade  of  this  century  were  less  fortunate 
than  those  of  the  seventh  decade.  Doc- 


tor  Holmes  tells  us  that  he  was  educated 
on  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Evenings  at  Home. 
"  There  we  found  ourselves  in  a  strange 
world,  where  James  was  called  Jem,  not 
Jim,  as  we  always  heard  it ;  where  one 
found  cowslips  in  the  fields,  while  what 
we  saw  were  buttercups  ;  where  naughty 
school -boys  got  through  a  gap  in  the 
hedge  to  steal  Farmer  Giles's  red-streaks, 
instead  of  shinning  over  the  fence  to  hook 
old  Daddy  Jones's  Baldwins  ;  where  there 
were  larks  and  nightingales  instead  of 
yellow  -  birds  and  bobolinks  ;  where  the 
robin  was  a  little  domestic  bird  that  fed 
at  the  table,  instead  of  a  great,  fidgety, 
jerky,  whooping  thrush  ;  where  poor  peo 
ple  lived  in  thatched  cottages,  instead  of 
shingled  ten  -  footers  ;  where  the  tables 
were  made  of  deal ;  where  every  village 
had  its  parson  and  clerk  and  beadle,  its 
green-grocer,  its  apothecary  who  visited 
the  sick,  and  its  bar-maid  who  served  out 
ale"  (pp.  172-3). 

And  with  the  witty  wisdom  which  is 
the  secret  of  the  Autocrat's  power  over 
us,  he  continues :  "  What  a  mess — there 
is  no  other  word  for  it — what  a  mess  was 
made  of  it  in  our  young  minds  in  the  at 
tempt  to  reconcile  what  we  read  about 


with  what  we  saw  !  It  was  like  putting  a 
picture  of  Regent's  Park  in  one  side  of  a 
stereoscope  and  a  picture  of  Boston  Com 
mon  on  the  other,  and  trying  to  make  one 
of  them.  The  end  was  that  we  all  grew 
up  with  a  mental  squint  which  we  could 
never  get  rid  of.  We  saw  the  lark  and 
the  cowslip  and  the  rest  on  the  printed 
page  with  one  eye,  the  bobolink  and  the 
buttercup,  and  so  on,  with  the  other  in 
nature.  This  world  is  always  a  riddle  to 
us  at  best ;  but  those  English  children's 
books  seemed  so  perfectly  simple  and  nat 
ural,  and  yet  were  so  alien  to  our  youth 
ful  experiences  that  the  Houyhnhnm 
primer  could  not  have  muddled  our  in 
tellects  more  hopelessly." 

The  colonial  habit  of  dependence  on 
England  for  literature  and  of  deference 
to  British  opinion  is  to  be  seen  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  American  drama  quite  as  dis 
tinctly  as  in  the  other  departments  of  lit 
erature,  and  it  is  not  yet  wholly  extinct. 
At  first,  of  course,  all  our  actors  were  of 
British  birth.  When  the  first  American 
comedy,  Royall  Tyler's  "Contrast,"  was 
played  at  the  John  Street  Theatre  in  New 
York  in  1787,  the  character  of  Jonathan 
the  Yankee  was  undertaken  by  Thomas 


Wignell,  a  native  of  England.  Thomas 
Abthorpe  Cooper  was  criticised  in  Lon 
don  as  an  American,  but  he  had  been 
born  in  Great  Britain.  Edwin  Forrest 
was  the  first  distinguished  tragedian  who 
was  a  native  of  our  continent.  Since  he 
set  the  example  many  an  American  actor 
has  appeared  in  England,  and  Mr.  Au- 
gustin  Daly  has  taken  his  whole  com 
pany  of  comedians  to  Europe  repeatedly. 
Nowadays  there  are  always  perform 
ers  of  American  birth  and  training  in 
half  a  dozen  of  the  leading  London  the 
atres. 

Indeed,  it  might  fairly  be  said  that  act 
ing  was  the  first  of  the  arts  to  develop 
here  in  America;  beyond  all  question  it 
was  the  first  that  we  began  to  export. 
But  the  art  of  the  native  American  drama 
tist  long  lagged  behind  that  of  the  native 
American  actor.  Perhaps  even  now  there 
is  still  a  lingering  survival  of  the  preju 
dice  in  favor  of  foreign  plays,  or,  at  least, 
against  plays  of  American  authorship. 
At  present  the  foreign  play  most  likely 
to  be  in  favor  is  the  French,  but  when 
the  theatre  was  young  in  this  country  our 
sole  reliance  was  on  the  British  stage. 
Now  we  get  light  from  Berlin  and  from 


Paris ;  then  we  saw  no  ray  of  hope  ex 
cept  from  London. 

So  complete  was  the  dependence  of  the 
Park  Theatre  on  Drury  Lane  and  on  Co- 
vent  Garden  in  the  early  part  of  this  cen 
tury,  that  when  our  first  native  dramatist, 
William  Dunlap,  made  adaptations  of 
Kotzebue's  plays  he  took  good  care  not 
to  avow  his  share  in  the  work,  allowing 
it  to  be  supposed  that  his  versions  of  the 
German  originals  were  those  which  had 
been  made  for  the  London  stage.  Even 
as  late  as  1812,  when  Mr.  J.  N.  Barker 
dramatized  Marmion  "  the  prejudice  then 
existing  against  American  authors" — to 
quote  the  words  of  Mr.  Ireland,  the  his 
torian  of  the  New  York  stage — "  was  so 
great  that  the  play  was  announced  as  the 
production  of  an  English  dramatist,  and 
thus,  with  its  fine  cast,  commanded  an 
extraordinary  success."  Perhaps  this  is 
even  more  pitiful  than  Cooper's  pretend 
ing  to  be  an  Englishman  in  his  first  novel. 

To  show  the  changes  which  have  taken 
place  in  the  composition  of  our  play-bills 
during  the  past  thirty  years,  I  have  had 
lists  made  of  the  plays  which  were  adver 
tised  for  performance  in  the  first  full 
week  of  January  in  1861,  1871,  1881,  and 

6 


•v 


1891.  The  result  of  the  consideration  of 
these  lists  is  not  as  convincing  as  one 
could  wish,  for  the  performances  of  a 
single  week  are  scarcely  enough  to  fur 
nish  matter  for  the  adequate  comparison 
of  one  year  with  another.  Yet  the  com 
parison  is  not  without  interest,  and  it 
seems  to  me  indisputably  instructive.  All 
grand  operas,  all  circuses,  all  menageries, 
all  dime  museums,  all  negro  minstrel  en 
tertainments,  and  all  those  strange  per 
formances  known,  for  some  inscrutable 
reason,  as  "variety  shows,"  are  here  left 
out  of  court,  as  having  little  or  no  con 
nection  with  literature. 

Making  these  deductions,  we  find  that 
there  were  open  in  New  York  in  the  first 
week  of  January,  1861,  seven  places  of 
amusement  devoted  to  the  drama,  at  only 
two  of  which  were  the  plays  wholly  of 
American  authorship ;  although  at  a  third, 
where  Edwin  Forrest  was  acting,  the 
American  tragedy  of  "The  Gladiator" 
shared  the  bill  with  the  British  tragedy 
of  "  Damon  and  Pythias."  At  the  rest 
of  the  theatres  the  plays  were  of  Brit 
ish  authorship,  that  at  Wallack's  being 
"  Pauline,"  a  British  dramatization  of  a 
French  novel. 


In  the  corresponding  week  of  1871 
after  making  the  same  omissions,  and 
after  deducting  also  the  performances  in 
foreign  languages,  always  very  frequent 
in  a  city  with  a  population  as  cosmopol 
itan  as  ours — making  these  allowances,  we 
find  seven  theatres,  at  which  three  British 
plays  are  being  performed  and  three 
American  plays,  and  one  play,  if  it  can  so 
be  called,  "  The  Black  Crook,"  which  was 
an  American  adaptation  from  the  Ger 
man.  There  was  at  this  time  a  temporary 
prevalence  of  negro  minstrelsy  and  the 
variety  show. 

In  1 88 1  the  New  Yorker  who  went  to 
the  theatre  during  the  first  week  in  Jan 
uary  had  his  choice  of  fifteen  perform 
ances,  and  he  could  see  nine  plays 
of  American  authorship,  two  American 
adaptations  from  the  German,  two  British 
adaptations  from  the  French,  and  two 
plays  of  British  authorship.  The  pro 
portion  of  American  plays  seems  over 
whelming,  and  it  was  probably  not  main 
tained  throughout  the  year,  although  the 
preceding  decade  had  seen  an  extraor 
dinary  development  of  the  American 
drama.  Among  those  to  be  seen  at  this 
time  in  New  York  were  "  The  Danites," 


"  Hazel  Kirke,"and"  The  Banker's  Daugh 
ter." 

When  we  come  to  1891  we  see  that  the 
list  of  theatres  offering  a  dramatic  enter 
tainment  in  the  English  language  has 
swollen  to  twenty-one,  and  we  note  that 
the  variety  shows  and  the  negro  minstrel 
performances  are  now  infrequent.  At 
these  twenty-one  theatres  we  could  see 
thirteen  plays  of  American  authorship,  be 
sides  two  American  adaptations  from  the 
German,  while  at  the  same  time  there 
were  also  visible  five  plays  by  British  au 
thors  and  one  British  adaptation  from  the 
French.  I  may  add  also,  and  of  my  own 
knowledge,  that  the  plays  which  were  most 
popular,  and  therefore  most  profitable  at 
this  time,  were  all  to  be  found  among  the 
thirteen  of  American  authorship.  It  is  a 
fact  also  that  for  fully  forty  years  now  the 
great  pecuniary  successes  of  the  Ameri 
can  theatre  have  been  gained  by  plays  of 
American  life,  and  more  especially  of 
American  character.  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cab 
in,"  "  Rip  Van  Winkle,"  "  Colonel  Sellers," 
"My  Partner,"  "The  Danites,"  "The 
Banker's  Daughter,"  "  Held  by  the  En 
emy,"  and  "  Shenandoah  "  have  had  no 
foreign  rivals  in  popularity  except  "  The 


Two  Orphans."  Possibly  exception  should 
also  be  made  of  "  The  Shaughraun"  and 
"  Hazel  Kirke,"  both  written  in  America, 
although  dealing  with  life  in  Europe. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Copyright  act 
of  1891  has  had,  and  will  have,  but  little 
effect  upon  the  foreign  dramatist,  because, 
for  twenty  years  and  more,  judicial  deci 
sions  in  the  United  States  courts  had  ac 
corded  him  a  full  protection  for  his  stage- 
right  under  the  common  law.  Thus  the 
American  dramatist  had  been  freed  from 
the  necessity  of  vending  his  wares  in  com 
petition  with  stolen  goods  long  before  a 
like  privilege  had  been  vouchsafed  to  the 
American  novelist. 

A  careful  study  of  the  figures  here  pre 
sented  will  convince  the  disinterested 
critic  that  the  American  dramatist  has 
passed  his  foreign  rival  in  the  race  for 
popularity,  jusT  as  a  careful  study  of  the 
successive  lists  of  Messrs.  Harper  &  Broth 
ers  and  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  & 
Company  will  prove  that  the  American 
author  has  also  overtaken  the  foreigner. 
If  there  was  truth  once  in  Sir  Henry  Sum- 
ner  Maine's  assertion  that  we  Americans 
offered  the  example  of  a  literary  servitude 
without  parallel,  that  assertion  is  true  no 


longer.  The  American  author  is  now- 
conscious  of  a  demand  from  the  American 
public  for  plays  and  for  books  which  re 
flect  American  life  and  embody  American 
character.  Before  another  decade  has 
closed  the  century,  the  proportion  of  works 
of  foreign  authorship  to  be  seen  in  our 
book-stores  and  in  our  theatres  is  certain 
to  be  smaller  still.  Sooner  or  later  the 
time  will  come  when  it  will  be  profitable 
to  reproduce  in  America  only  the  best  of 
books  of  foreign  authors  and  only  the  best 
plays  of  foreign  dramatists. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  American 
author  has  been  taking  possession  of  his 
own  country  he  has  also  been  conquering 
abroad.  I  have  not  had  time  for  the  need 
ful  and  laborious  calculation,  but  I  believe 
that  an  examination  of  the  files  of  the 
London  Athenceum  and  Satitrday  Review 
of  1 86 1  would  show  that  very  few  books 
of  American  authorship  were  deemed 
worthy  of  reprint  and  review  in  England, 
while  an  examination  of  their  files  for 
1891  would  reveal  a  surprisingly  large  pro 
portion  of  books  of  American  origin  now 
considered  as  entitled  to  criticism.  And 
I  believe  that  this  proportion  is  steadily 
increasing,  and  that  more  and  more  books 


published  in  the  United  States  are  every 
year  reprinted  in  Great  Britain,  or  ex 
ported  for  sale  in  London  in  editions  of 
satisfactory  size. 

Of  course  the  reputation  of  American 
authors  has  been  spread  abroad  in  Eng 
land  largely  by  the  agency  of  the  great 
American  illustrated  magazines,  which 
have  now  an  enormous  circulation  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  There  are  at 
least  two  American  magazines  which  far 
outsell  in  England  itself  any  British  mag 
azine  of  corresponding  pretensions.  A 
few  British  magazines  and  reviews  con 
tinue  to  be  imported  into  the  United 
States,  but  they  are  very  few  indeed  ;  I 
think  that  the  total  number  of  copies  im 
ported  is  less  than  the  number  exported 
of  either  of  the  two  great  American  illus 
trated  monthlies. 

It  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  assert  that 
this  wide-spread  popularity  of  the  Ameri 
can  magazines  in  England  has  not  been 
due  to  any  attempt  to  cater  to  the  English 
market.  On  the  contrary,  the  more  obvi 
ously  and  frankly  American  these  maga 
zines  are,  the  more  marked  is  their  suc 
cess  in  England.  No  doubt  a  large  part 
of  this  popularity  is  due  to  American 


superiority  in  wood-engraving,  in  proc 
ess  work,  in  printing,  and  to  the  liber 
ality  of  the  American  publisher  in  paying 
for  these  embellishments ;  but  a  share  as 
large  is  due  to  the  skill  with  which  the 
American  magazines  are  edited,  to  their 
freshness,  their  brightness,  their  vivacity, 
to  their  national  flavor,  and  especially  to 
their  larger  scope  and  to  their  stronger 
understanding  of  the  capabilities  and  the 
opportunities  of  the  modern  periodical. 
1892 


THE   CENTENARY   OF   FENIMORE 
COOPER 

jOST  appropriate  is  it  that  the 
first  literary  centenary  which 
we  were  called  upon  to  com 
memorate  one  hundred  years 
after  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution  that  knit  these  States  into  a 
nation  should  be  the  birthday  of  the  au 
thor  who  has  done  the  most  to  make  us 
known  to  the  nations  of  Europe.  In  the 
first  year  of  Washington's  first  term  as 
President,  on  the  fifteenth  day  of  Sep 
tember,  1789,  was  born  James  Fenimore 
Cooper,  the  first  of  American  novelists, 
and  the  first  American  author  to  carry 
our  flag  outside  the  limits  of  our  language. 
Franklin  was  the  earliest  American  who 
had  fame  among  foreigners  ;  but  his  wide 
popularity  was  due  rather  to  his  achieve 
ments  as  a  philosopher,  as  a  physicist,  as 
a  statesman,  than  to  his  labors  as  an  au- 


thor.  Irving  was  six  years  older  than 
Cooper,  and  his  reputation  was  as  high 
in  England  as  at  home ;  yet  to  this  day 
he  is  little  more  than  a  name  to  those  who 
do  not  speak  our  mother-tongue.  But 
after  Cooper  had  published  The  Spy,  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,  and  The  Pilot  his 
popularity  was  cosmopolitan  ;  he  was  al 
most  as  widely  read  in  France,  in  Ger 
many,  and  in  Italy  as  in  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States.  Only  one  American 
book  has  ever  since  attained  the  inter 
national  success  of  these  of  Cooper's — 
Uncle  Toms  Cabin,  and  only  one  Ameri 
can  author  has  since  gained  a  name  at  all 
commensurate  with  Cooper's  abroad — 
Poe.  Here  in  these  United  States  we 
know  what  Emerson  was  to  us  and  what 
he  did  for  us  and  what  our  debt  is  to 
him ;  but  the  French  and  the  Germans  and 
the  Italians  do  not  know  Emerson.  When 
Professor  Boyesen  visited  Hugo  some  ten 
years  ago  he  found  that  the  great  French 
lyrist  had  never  heard  of  Emerson.  I 
have  a  copy  of  Evangeline  annotated  in 
French  for  the  use  of  French  children 
learning  English  at  school ;  but  whatever 
Longfellow's  popularity  in  England  or  in 
Germany,  he  is  really  but  little  known  in 


France  or  Italy  or  Spain.  With  Goethe 
and  Schiller,  with  Scott  and  Byron,  Coop 
er  was  one  of  the  foreign  forces  which 
brought  about  the  Romanticist  revolt  in 
France,  profoundly  affecting  the  literature 
of  all  Latin  countries.  Dumas  owed  al 
most  as  much  to  Cooper  as  he  did  to 
Scott ;  and  Balzac  said  that  if  Cooper  had 
only  drawn  character  as  well  as  he  painted 
"  the  phenomena  of  nature,  he  would  have 
uttered  the  last  word  of  our  art." 

In  his  admirable  life  of  Cooper,  one  of 
the  best  of  modern  biographies,  Professor 
Lounsbury  shows  clearly  the  extraordi 
nary  state  of  affairs  with  which  Cooper 
had  to  contend.  Foremost  among  the 
disadvantages  against  which  he  had  to 
labor  was  the  dull,  deadening  provincial 
ism  of  American  criticism  at  the  time 
when  The  Spy  was  written  ;  and  as  we 
read  Professor  Lounsbury's  pages  we  see 
how  bravely  Cooper  fought  for  our  intel 
lectual  emancipation  from  the  shackles 
of  the  British  criticism  of  that  time,  more 
ignorant  then  and  even  more  insular  than 
it  is  now.  Abroad  Cooper  received  the  at 
tention  nearly  always  given  in  literature 
to  those  who  bring  a  new  thing ;  and  the 
new  thing  which  Cooper  annexed  to  liter- 


ature  was  America.  At  home  he  had  to 
struggle  against  a  belief  that  our  soil  was 
barren  of  romance — as  though  the  author 
who  used  his  eyes  could  not  find  ample 
material  wherever  there  was  humanity. 
Cooper  was  the  first  who  proved  the  fit 
ness  of  American  life  and  American  his 
tory  for  the  uses  of  fiction.  The  Spy  is 
really  the  first  of  American  novels,  and  it 
remains  one  of  the  best.  Cooper  was  the 
prospector  of  that  little  army  of  indus 
trious  miners  now  engaged  in  working 
every  vein  of  local  color  and  character, 
and  in  sifting  out  the  golden  dust  from 
the  sands  of  local  history.  The  authors  of 
Oldtown  Folks,  of  the  Tales  of  the  Argo 
nauts,  of  Old  Creole  Days,  and  of  In  the 
Tennessee  Mountains  were  but  following 
in  Cooper's  footsteps  —  though  they  car 
ried  more  modern  tools.  And  when  the 
desire  of  the  day  is  for  detail  and  for  fin 
ish,  it  is  not  without  profit  to  turn  again 
to  stones  of  a  bolder  sweep.  When  the 
tendency  of  the  times  is  perhaps  towards 
an  undue  elaboration  of  miniature  por 
traits,  there  is  gain  in  going  back  to  the 
masterpieces  of  a  literary  artist  who  suc 
ceeded  best  in  heroic  statues.  And  not  a 
few  of  us,  whatever  our  code  of  literary  es- 


thetics,  may  find  delight,  fleeting  though 
it  be,  in  the  free  outline  drawing  of  Coop 
er,  after  our  eyes  are  tired  by  the  niggling 
and  cross-hatching  of  many  among  our 
contemporary  realists.  When  our  pleas 
ant  duty  is  done,  when  our  examination 
is  at  an  end,  and  when  we  seek  to  sum  up 
our  impressions  and  to  set  them  down 
plainly,  we  find  that  chief  among  Cooper's 
characteristics  were,  first,  a  sturdy,  hearty, 
robust,  out-door  and  open-air  wholesome- 
ness,  devoid  of  any  trace  of  offence  and 
free  from  all  morbid  taint ;  and,  second 
ly,  an  intense  Americanism  —  ingrained, 
abiding,  and  dominant.  Professor  Louns- 
bury  quotes  from  a  British  magazine  of 
1831  the  statement  that,  to  an  Englishman, 
Cooper  appeared  to  be  prouder  of  his 
birth  as  an  American  than  of  his  genius 
as  an  author  —  an  attitude  which  may 
seem  to  some  a  little  old-fashioned,  but 
which  on  Cooper's  part  was  both  natural 
and  becoming. 

The  Spy  was  the  earliest  of  Cooper's 
American  novels  (and  its  predecessor, 
Precaution,  a  mere  stencil  imitation  of  the 
minor  British  novel  of  that  day,  need  not 
be  held  in  remembrance  against  him). 
The  Spy,  published  in  1821,  was  followed 


in  1823  by  The  Pioneers,  the  first  of  the 
Leatherstocking  Tales  to  appear,  and  by 
far  the  poorest ;  indeed  it  is  the  only  one 
of  the  five  for  which  any  apology  need  be 
made.  The  narrative  drags  under  the 
burden  of  overabundant  detail  ;  and  the 
story  may  deserve  to  be  called  dull  at 
times.  Leatherstocking  even  is  but  a  faint 
outline  of  himself,  as  the  author  afterwards 
with  loving  care  elaborated  the  character. 
The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  came  out  in  1826, 
and  its  success  was  instantaneous  and  en 
during.  In  1827  appeared  The  Prairie, 
the  third  tale  in  which  Leatherstocking 
is  the  chief  character.  It  is  rare  that  an 
author  is  ever  able  to  write  a  successful 
sequel  to  a  successful  story,  yet  Cooper 
did  more ;  The  Prairie  is  a  sequel  to  The 
Pioneers,  and  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans 
is  a  prologue  to  it.  Eighteen  years  after 
the  first  of  the  Leatherstocking  Tales  had 
been  published,  Cooper  issued  the  last  of 
them,  amplifying  his  single  sketch  into  a 
drama  in  five  acts  by  the  addition  of  The 
Pathfinder,  printed  in  1840,  and  of  The 
Deerslayer,  printed  in  1841.  In  the  se 
quence  of  events  The  Deer  slayer,  the  latest 
written,  is  the  earliest  to  be  read ;  then 
comes  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  fol- 


lowed  by  The  Pathfinder  and  The  Pio 
neers;  while  in  The  Prairie  the  series  ends. 
Of  the  incomparable  variety  of  scene  in 
these  five  related  tales,  or  of  the  extraor 
dinary  fertility  of  invention  which  they 
reveal,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  say  too 
much.  In  their  kind  they  have  never 
been  surpassed.  The  earliest  to  appear, 
The  Pioneers,  is  the  least  meritorious — as 
though  Cooper  had  not  yet  seen  the  value 
of  his  material,  and  had  not  yet  acquired 
the  art  of  handling  it  to  advantage.  The 
Pathfinder,  dignified  as  it  is  and  pathetic 
in  its  portrayal  of  Leatherstocking's  love- 
making,  lacks  the  absorbing  interest  of 
The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  ;  it  is  perhaps 
inferior  in  art  to  The  Deerslayer,  which 
was  written  the  year  after,  and  it  has  not 
the  noble  simplicity  of  The  Prairie,  in 
which  we  see  the  end  of  the  old  hunter. 

There  are,  no  doubt,  irregularities  in 
the  Leatherstocking  Tales,  and  the  incon 
gruities  and  lesser  errors  inevitable  in  a 
mode  of  composition  at  once  desultory 
and  protracted  ;  but  there  they  stand,  a 
solid  monument  of  American  literature, 
and  not  the  least  enduring.  "  If  anything 
from  the  pen  of  the  writer  of  these  ro 
mances  is  at  all  to  outlive  himself,  it  is, 


unquestionably,  the  series  of  the  Leather- 
stocking  Tales' — so  wrote  the  author  when 
he  sent  forth  the  first  collected  and  re 
vised  edition  of  the  narrative  of  Natty 
Bumppo's  adventures.  That  Cooper  was 
right  seems  to-day  indisputable.  An  au 
thor  may  fairly  claim  to  be  judged  by  his 
best,  to  be  measured  by  his  highest ;  and 
the  Leatherstocking  Tales  are  Cooper's 
highest  and  best  in  more  ways  than  one, 
Jput  chiefly  because  of  the  lofty  figure  of 
Leatherstocking.  Lowell,  when  fabling 
for  critics,  said  that  Cooper  had  drawn 
but  one  new  character,  explaining  after 
wards  that 

The  men  who  have  given  to  one  character  life 
And  objective  existence,  are  not  very  rife ; 
You  may  number  them  all,  both  prose-writers  and  sing 
ers, 

Without  overruning  the  bounds  of  your  fingers ; 
And  Natty  won't  go  to  oblivion  quicker 
Than  Adams  the  parson  or  Primrose  the  vicar. 

And  Thackeray — perhaps  recalling  the 
final  scene  in  The  Prairie,  where  the  dy 
ing  Leatherstocking  drew  himself  up  and 
said  "  Here  !"  and  that  other  scene  in  The 
Neivcomes,  where  the  dying  Colonel  drew 
himself  up  and  said  "  Adsum  !" — was  fre 
quent  in  praise  of  Cooper ;  and  in  one  of 


97 


the  Roundabout  Papers,  after  expressing 
his  fondness  for  Scott's  modest  and  hon 
orable  heroes,  he  adds :  "  Much  as  I  like 
these  most  unassuming,  manly,  unpreten 
tious  gentlemen,  I  have  to  own  that  I 
think  the  heroes  of  another  writer— viz., 
Leatherstocking,  Uncas,  Hardheart,  Tom 
Coffin  —  are  quite  the  equals  of  Scott's 
men ;  perhaps  Leatherstocking  is  better 
than  any  one  in  '  Scott's  lot.'  La  Longite 
Carabine  is  one  of  the  great  prize-men  of 
fiction.  He  ranks  with  your  Uncle  Toby, 
Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  Falstaff —  heroic 
figures  all,  American  or  British,  and  the 
artist  has  deserved  well  of  his  country 
who  devised  them." 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  Thackeray  sin 
gled  out  for  praise  two  of  Cooper's  Indians 
to  pair  with  the  hunter  and  the  sailor ;  and 
it  seems  to  me  that  Thackeray  is  fairer 
towards  him  who  conceived  Uncas  and 
Hardheart  than  are  the  authors  of  A  Fa 
ble  for  Critics  and  of  Condensed  Novels. 
Muck-a-Muck  I  should  set  aside  among 
the  parodies  which  are  unfair — so  far  as 
the  red  man  is  concerned,  at  least ;  for  I 
hold  as  quite  fair  Mr.  Harte's  raillery  of 
the  wooden  maidens  and  polysyllabic  old 
men  who  stalk  through  Cooper's  pages. 

7 


Cooper's  Indian  has  been  disputed  and  he 
has  been  laughed  at,  but  he  still  lives. 
Cooper's  Indian  is  very  like  Mr.  Parkman's 
Indian — and  who  knows  the  red  man  bet 
ter  than  the  author  of  The  Oregon  Trail? 
Uncas  and  Chingachgook  and  Hardheart 
are  all  good  men  and  true,  and  June,  the 
wife  of  Arrowhead,  the  Tuscarora,  is  a 
good  wife  and  a  true  woman.  They  are 
Indians,  all  of  them  ;  heroic  figures,  no 
doubt,  and  yet  taken  from  life,  with  no 
more  idealization  than  may  serve  the 
maker  of  romance.  They  remind  us  that 
when  West  first  saw  the  Apollo  Belve 
dere  he  thought  at  once  of  a  Mohawk 
brave.  They  were  the  result  of  knowledge 
and  of  much  patient  investigation  under 
conditions  forever  passed  away.  We  see 
Cooper's  Indians  nowadays  through  mists 
of  prejudice  due  to  those  who  have  imi 
tated  them  from  the  outside.  The  Last  of 
the  Mohicans  has  suffered  the  degrada 
tion  of  a  trail  of  dime  novels,  written  by 
those  apparently  more  familiar  with  the 
Five  Points  than  with  the  Five  Nations ; 
Cooper  begat  Mayne  Reid,  and  Mayne 
Reid  begat  Ned  Buntline  and  Buffalo 
Sill's  First  Scalp  for  Custer  and  similar 
abominations.  But  none  the  less  are  Un- 


casand  Hardheart  noble  figures,  worthily 
drawn,  and  never  to  be  mentioned  with 
out  praise. 

In  1821  Cooper  published  The  Spy,  the 
first  American  historical  novel;  in  1823 
he  published  The  Pioneers,  in  which  the 
backwoodsman  and  the  red  man  were  first 
introduced  into  literature;  and  in  1824 
he  published  The  Pilot,  and  for  the  first 
time  the  scene  of  a  story  was  laid  on  the 
sea  rather  than  on  the  land,  and  the  in 
terest  turned  wholly  on  marine  advent 
ure.  In  four  years  Cooper  had  put  forth 
three  novels,  each  in  its  way  road-break 
ing  and  epoch-making :  only  the  great 
men  of  letters  have  a  record  like  this. 
With  the  recollection  before  us  of  some 
of  Smollett's  highly  colored  naval  char 
acters,  we  cannot  say  that  Cooper  sketched 
the  first  real  sailor  in  fiction,  but  he  in 
vented  the  sea  tale  just  as  Poe  invented 
the  detective  story  —  and  in  neither  case 
has  any  disciple  surpassed  the  master. 
The  supremacy  of  the  The  Pilot  and  The 
Red  Rover  is  quite  as  evident  as  the  su 
premacy  of  the  The  Gold  Bug  and  The 
Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue.  We  have 
been  used  to  the  novel  of  the  ocean,  and 
it  is  hard  for  us  now  to  understand  why 


Cooper's  friends  thought  his  attempt  to 
write  one  perilous  and  why  they  sought  to 
dissuade  him.  It  was  believed  that  read 
ers  could  not  be  interested  in  the  contin 
gencies  and  emergencies  of  life  on  the 
ocean  wave.  Nowadays  it  seems  to  us  that 
if  any  part  of  The  Pilot  lags  and  stumbles 
it  is  that  which  passes  ashore :  Cooper's 
landscapes,  or  at  least  his  views  of  a  ruined 
abbey,  may  be  affected  at  times,  but  his 
marines  are  always  true  and  always  capti 
vating. 

Cooper,  like  Thackeray,  forbade  his 
family  to  authorize  or  aid  any  biographer 
— although  the  American  novelist  had  as 
little  to  conceal  as  the  English.  No  doubt 
Cooper  had  his  faults,  both  as  a  man  and 
as  an  author.  He  was  thin-skinned  and 
hot-headed.  He  let  himself  become  in 
volved  in  a  great  many  foolish  quarrels. 
He  had  a  plentiful  lack  of  tact.  But  the 
man  was  straightforward  and  high-mind 
ed,  and  so  was  the  author.  We  can  readily 
pardon  his  petty  pedantries  and  the  little 
vices  of  expression  he  persisted  in.  We 
can  confess  that  his  "  females,"  as  he  would 
term  them,  are  indubitably  wooden.  We 
may  acknowledge  that  even  among  his 
men  there  is  no  wide  range  of  character ; 


Richard  Jones  (in  The  Pioneers}  is  first 
cousin  to  Cap  (in  The  Pathfinder),  just 
as  Long  Tom  Coffin  is  a  half-brother  of 
Natty  Bumppo.  We  must  admit  that 
Cooper's  lighter  characters  are  not  touch 
ed  with  the  humor  that  Scott  could  com 
mand  at  will;  the  Naturalist  (in  The 
Prairie),  for  example,  is  not  alive  and 
delightful  like  the  Antiquary  of  Scott. 

In  the  main,  indeed,  Cooper's  humor  is 
not  of  the  purest.  When  he  attempted  it 
of  malice  prepense  it  was  often  laboriously 
unfunny.  But  sometimes,  as  it  fell  acci 
dentally  from  the  lips  of  Leatherstocking, 
it  was  unforced  and  delicious  (see,  for  in 
stance,  at  the  end  of  chapter  xxvii.  of  The 
Pathfinder,  the  account  of  Natty 's  spar 
ing  the  sleeping  Mingos  and  of  the  fate 
which  thereafter  befell  them  at  the  hands 
of  Chingachgook).  On  the  other  hand, 
Cooper's  best  work  abounds  in  fine  ro 
mantic  touches — Long  Tom  pinning  the 
British  captain  to  the  mast  with  the  har 
poon,  the  wretched  Abiram  (in  The  Prai 
rie)  tied  hand  and  foot  and  left  on  a  ledge 
with  a  rope  around  his  neck  so  that  he  can 
move  only  to  hang  himself,  the  death- 
grip  of  the  brave  (in  The  Last  of  the 
Mohicans)  hanging  wounded  and  without 


hope  over  the  watery  abyss — these  are 
pictures  fixed  in  the  memory  and  nowun- 
forgetable. 

Time  is  unerring  in  its  selection.  Coop 
er  has  now  been  dead  nearly  two-score 
years.  What  survives  of  his  work  are  the 
Sea  Tales  and  the  Leatherstockmg  Talcs. 
From  these  I  have  found  myself  forced 
to  cite  characters  and  episodes.  These 
are  the  stories  which  hold  their  own  in 
the  libraries.  Public  and  critics  are  at 
one  here.  The  wind  of  the  lakes  and  the 
prairies  has  not  lost  its  balsam,  and  the 
salt  of  the  sea  keeps  its  savor.  For  the 
free  movement  of  his  figures  and  for  the 
proper  expansion  of  his  story  Cooper 
needed  a  broad  region  and  a  widening 
vista.  He  excelled  in  conveying  the  sug 
gestion  of  vastness  and  limitless  space, 
and  of  depicting  the  human  beings  proper 
to  these  great  reaches  of  land  and  water 
— the  two  elements  he  ruled  ;  and  he  was 
equally  at  home  on  the  rolling  waves  of 
the  prairie  and  on  the  green  and  irregular 
hillocks  of  the  ocean. 


IGNORANCE   AND   INSULARITY 

the  four  quarters  of  the 
globe,  who  reads  an  Amer 
ican  book  ?"  asked  Sydney 
Smith  in  the  Edinburgh  Re 
view,  in  1820;  and  for  years 
the  American  people  writhed  under  the 
query  as  though  they  had  been  put  to  the 
question  themselves.  In  those  days  the 
American  cuticle  was  extraordinarily  sen 
sitive,  and  the  gentlest  stroke  of  satire 
caused  exquisite  pain.  But  although  Syd 
ney  Smith  was  unkind,  he  was  not  un 
just  ;  in  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe  no 
body  to-day  reads  any  American  book 
published  before  1820— except  Irving's 
Knickerbocker,  In  the  very  year  that 
Sydney  Smith  wrote  there  was  published 
in  England  a  book  which  might  have  ar 
rested  the  dean's  sarcastic  inquiry  had  it 
appeared  a  few  months  earlier.  This  was 
Irving's  Sketch  Book.  The  Americans  of 


104 


seventy  years  ago  did  not  know  it ;  but 
none  the  less  is  it  a  fact  that  American 
literature  made  a  very  poor  showing  then, 
and  that  there  was  in  existence  in  those 
days  scarcely  a  single  book  with  vitality 
enough  to  survive  threescore  years  and 
ten.  The  men  who  were  to  make  our  lit 
erature  what  it  is  were  then  alive — Irving, 
Cooper,  Bryant,  Emerson,  Longfellow, 
Whittier,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Poe,  Haw 
thorne,  Bancroft,  Prescott,  and  Motley; 
but  Irving's  Knickerbocker  was  the  only 
book  then  in  print  which  to-day  is 
r.ead  or  readable.  It  was  only  in  1821 
that  Cooper  published  the  Spy,  the 
first  American  historical  novel,  and  the 
first  of  the  Leatherstocking  Tales  did  not 
appear  until  1823.  Reverberations  of 
the  angry  roar  which  answered  Sydney 
Smith's  question  must  have  reached  his 
ears,  for,  in  1824,  again  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  he  wondered  at  our  touchiness : 
"  That  Americans  .  .  .  should  be  flung  into 
such  convulsions  by  English  Reviewers 
and  Magazines  is  really  a  sad  specimen 
of  Columbian  juvenility." 

Now  we  have  changed  all  that.  In 
less  than  three-quarters  of  a  century  (a 
very  short  time  in  the  history  of  a  nation) 


our  cuticle  has  toughened — perhaps  the 
process  was  hastened  by  the  strokes  of  a 
long  war  fought  for  conscience'  sake.  It 
is  not  so  easy  now  to  wring  our  withers, 
and  more  often  than  not  it  is  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic  that  the  galled  jade 
winces.  John  Bull  is  not  as  pachyder 
matous  as  once  he  was,  and  a  chance 
word  of  Brother  Jonathan's  penetrates 
and  rankles.  Mr.  Charles  Dudley  Warner 
once  let  fall  an  innocent  remark  about  the 
British  strawberry ;  and  more  than  one 
British  journal  flushed  with  rage  till  it 
rivalled  the  redness  of  that  worthy  but 
hollow-hearted  fruit.  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells 
suggested  a  criticism  of  two  British  novel 
ists  ;  and  the  editor  of  the  Saturday  Re 
view  made  ready  to  accept  the  command 
of  the  Channel  Fleet.  Mr.  Theodore 
Roosevelt  rebuked  a  British  general  for 
insulting  Robert  E.  Lee  with  blundering 
laudation  ;  and  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  prompt 
ly  wrote  a  paper  on  "  International  Girl- 
ishness,"  in  which  he  very  courteously  of 
fered  himself  as  an  example  of  the  failing 
he  described.  In  a  little  essay  on  the  cen 
tenary  of  Fenimore  Cooper,  I  remarked 
that  the  reader  of  Professor  Lounsbury's 
admirable  biography  could  "see  how 


io6 


bravely  Cooper  fought  for  our  intellect 
ual  emancipation  from  the  shackles  of 
the  British  criticism  of  that  time,  more 
ignorant  then  and  even  more  insular 
than  it  is  now;"  and  against  this  casual 
accusation  that  British  criticism  is  or  was 
ignorant  and  insular,  Mr.  Andrew  Lang 
again  protested,  with  his  wonted  suavity, 
of  course,  but  with  energy  nevertheless 
and  with  emphasis. 

Turn  about  is  fair  enough.  When  Time 
plays  the  fiddle,  the  dancers  must  needs 
change  places;  and  we  Americans  have 
no  call  for  weeping  that  the  British  atti 
tude  to-day  resembles  ours  in  the  early 
part  of  the  century  more  than  our  own 
does.  The  change  is  pleasant,  and  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  ought  not  to  object  to  our 
enjoyment  of  it.  As  regards  the  special 
charge  that  British  criticism  was  more  ig 
norant  and  more  insular  fifty  odd  years 
ago  than  it  is  now — well,  I  do  not  think 
that  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  ought  to  object  to 
that  either.  If  I  understand  my  own 
statement,  it  means  that  there  has  been  an 
improvement  in  British  criticism  in  the 
past  half-century;  and  I  do  not  think 
that  this  assertion  affords  a  fair  ground 
for  a  quarrel.  Still,  when  Mr.  Andrew 


io7 


Lang  throws  down  the  gauntlet,  I  cannot 
refuse  to  put  on  the  gloves;  and  I  decline 
to  avail  myself  of  the  small  side  door  he 
kindly  left  ajar  for  my  escape. 

First,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  when  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  writes  about  "critics,"  and 
when  I  wrote,  we  were  discussing  different 
things.  There  are  two  kinds  of  critics, 
and  the  word  criticism  may  mean  either 
of  two  things.  The  writer  of  an  anony 
mous  book-review  printed  in  a  daily  or 
weekly  paper  considers  himself  a  critic, 
and  the  product  of  his  pen  is  accepted  as  a 
criticism.  But  there  is  no  other  word  than 
criticism  to  describe  the  finest  work  (in 
prose)  of  James  Russell  Lowell  and  of 
Matthew  Arnold.  Mr.  Andrew  Lang 
chooses  to  consider  chiefly  what  might  be 
called  the  higher  criticism,  and  he  sets 
aside  the  lower  critics  as  "  reviewers,"  de 
claring  that  "  reviewers  are  rarely  crit 
ics,  and  they  are  often  very  tired,  very 
casual,  very  flippant."  Now,  it  was  this 
sort  of  British  critic,  the  very  casual 
and  very  flippant  reviewer,  that  I  meant 
when  I  spoke  of  the  ignorance  and  in 
sularity  of  British  criticism  ;  and  it  was 
the  attitude  of  British  critics  of  this  type 
towards  America  that  I  had  in  mind.  It 


io8 


was  to  their  ignorance  of  America  and 
Americans  that  I  referred,  and  to  the  in 
sularity  of  their  position  towards  us. 
This  ignorance  is  now  less  than  it  was  in 
Cooper's  time,  and  of  late  the  insularity 
has  been  modified  for  the  better.  But  that 
they  were  "very  tired,  very  casual,  and 
very  flippant  "  is  not  an  excuse  for  their 
constant  attitude  towards  most  American 
authors ;  it  is  not  even  an  adequate  rea 
son.  No  doubt  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  knows 
the  anecdote — is  there  any  Merry  Jest 
that  he  has  not  heard  ? — of  the  Judge 
who  chafed  under  the  insulting  demeanor 
of  a  certain  barrister  until  at  last  he  was 
forced  to  protest :  "  Brother  Blank,"  he 
said,  "  I  know  my  great  inferiority  to 
you  ;  but,  after  all,  I  am  a  vertebrate  an 
imal,  and  your  manner  towards  me  would 
be  unbecoming  from  God  Almighty  to  a 
black  beetle !" 

It  is  in  relation  to  America  and  to 
American  workers  that  we  find  British 
criticism  ignorant  and  insular.  The  or 
dinary  British  critic  assumes  a  very  dif 
ferent  tone  towards  us  from  that  he 
assumes  towards  the  French  or  the 
Germans.  He  may  dislike  these,  but  he 
accepts  them  as  equals.  Us  he  regards  as 


109 


inferiors — as  degenerate  Englishmen  un 
fortunately  cut  off  from  communion  with 
the  father-land  and  the  mother-tongue, 
and  to  be  chided  because  we  do  not 
humbly  acknowledge  our  deficiencies. 
He  does  not  know  that  we  are  now 
no  more  English  than  the  English  them 
selves  are  now  Germans.  He  does  not 
guess  that  we  are  proud  that  we  are  not 
English — prouder,  perhaps,  of  nothing  else. 
He  does  not  think  that  we  do  not  like 
being  treated  as  though  we  were  younger 
sons  in  exile — wandering  prodigals,  de 
serving  no  better  fare  than  the  husks 
of  patronizing  criticism.  No  American 
likes  to  be  patronized,  and  even  some 
Englishmen  seem  to  object  to  it ;  appar 
ently  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  did  not  approve  of 
the  critical  nepotism  of  a  certain  Teutonic 
reviewer.  But  the  lordliness  of  the  em 
inent  German  who  reviewed  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang's  book  without  reading  it  was  tem 
pered  by  the  good  faith  with  which  he 
confessed  his  ignorance ;  and  his  offence 
was  less  heinous  than  that  of  the  critic  in 
the  Saturday  Review,  who  dismissed  Mr. 
Aldrich's  "Queen  of  Sheba"  with  a  curt 
assertion  that  it  was  like  the  author's  other 
poems. 


As  the  Greek  felt  towards  the  Barba 
rian  and  as  the  Jew  towards  the  Gentile, 
so  does  the  ordinary  British  critic  feel 
towards  America.  The  feeling  of  the 
Greek  and  of  the  Jew  was  perhaps  based 
on  a  serious  reason  ;  but  what  justifies 
the  lofty  superiority  of  the  British  critic? 
Is  not  its  cause  the  self-satisfaction  of 
ignorant  insularity  ? — using  neither  word 
in  any  offensive  sense.  And  does  it  not 
result  in  a  willingness  to  condemn  with 
out  knowledge  and  without  any  effort  to 
acquire  knowledge  ?  Any  one  who  re 
calls  Brougham's  review  of  Byron's  first 
book,  or  Jeffrey's  attack  on  Keats,  or 
Wilson's  dissection  of  Tennyson,  knows 
that  there  are  British  criticisms  which 
are  not  models  of  sweetness  and  light; 
never  are  sweetness  and  light  more  fre 
quently  absent  than  in  British  criticism 
of  America  and  of  Americans.  "  Light," 
I  take  it,  means  knowledge ;  and  "  sweet 
ness  "  is  incompatible  with  that  form  of 
morgue  britanm'que  which  one  may  call 
insularity. 

The  higher  criticism  in  England,  which 
Mr.  Andrew  Lang  praises  perhaps  not 
more  than  it  deserves,  has  developed 
greatly  within  the  last  twenty  years.  It 


is  not  ignorant  like  the  very  tired,  very 
casual,  and  very  flippant  reviewing,  nor  in 
the  same  fashion  ;  but  it  has  an  ignorance 
of  its  own,  compounded  of  many  simples. 
Its  attitude  towards  us  is  not  as  offensive, 
but  it  is  not  without  its  touch  of  superi 
ority  now  and  again.  Mr.  Andrew  Lang 
himself,  for  example,  is  ignorant  of  our 
best  critics,  and  confesses  his  ignorance 
as  frankly  as  did  his  Teutonic  reviewer ; 
and  then  he  reveals  what  is  not  wholly 
unlike  insularity  in  his  readiness,  despite 
this  ignorance,  to  make  comparisons  be 
tween  American  critics  and  British. 

On  Mr.  Andrew  Lang's  list  of  British 
critics  are  the  names  of  Mr.  Ruskin,  Mr. 
J.  A.  Symonds,  Mr.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephen,  Mr.  Walter  Pater,  Mr. 
George  Saintsbury,  Mr.  Frederic  Har 
rison,  Professor  Robertson  Smith,  Mr. 
Swinburne,  and  Mr. Theodore  Watts — and 
every  reader  must  instinctively  add  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang's  own  name  to  a  list  on 
which  it  will  find  no  superior.  The  list 
seems  oddly  chosen  ;  an  American  misses 
the  name  of  Mr.  John  Morley,  perhaps 
the  foremost  of  British  critics  of  our  day, 
and  those  of  Mr.  Austin  Dobson,  and  of 
Mr.  William  Archer.  Of  American  critics 


Mr.  Andrew  Lang  can  recall  of  his  own 
accord,  apparently,  only  the  name  of  Low 
ell,  and  he  remarks  that  "  Mr.  Howells,  in 
an  essay  on  this  subject,  mentions  Mr. 
Stedman  and  Mr.  T.  S.  Perry,  doubtless 
with  justice."  If  there  were  any  advan 
tage  in  making  out  a  list  of  American  crit 
ics  to  place  beside  the  list  of  British  crit 
ics,  I  should  put  down  the  names  of  Mr. 
Curtis,  Col.  Higginson,  Mr.  Warner,  Mr. 
R.  H.  Stoddard,  Professor  Lounsbury, 
Professor  T.  F.  Crane,  Mr.  W.  C.  Brow- 
nell,  Mr.  John  Burroughs,  Mr.  George  E. 
Woodberry,  and  Mr.  Henry  James — add 
ing,  of  course,  the  names  of  Mr.  Stedman 
and  of  Professor  Child,  mentioned  by  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  in  another  part  of  his  pa 
per.  But  I  fear  me  greatly  that  this  is 
idle ;  it  is  but  the  setting  up  of  one  per 
sonal  equation  over  against  another.  Or 
thodoxy  is  my  doxy  and  heterodoxy  is 
your  doxy.  Counting  of  noses  is  not  the 
best  way  to  settle  a  dispute  about  litera 
ture. 

Indeed  there  is  no  way  to  settle  such  a 
dispute,  and  there  is  no  hope  of  coming  to 
an  agreement.  "  It  is  a  very  pretty  quar 
rel  as  it  stands ;"  and  if  "  we  quarrel  in 
print,  by  the  book,"  let  us  stop  at  the  first 


degree,  the  Retort  Courteous,  riot  going 
on  even  to  the  third,  the  Reply  Churlish. 
Also  is  there  much  virtue  in  an  If.  "  If 
you  said  so,  then  I  said  so."  Let  us  then, 
while  there  is  yet  time,  shake  hands 
across  the  Atlantic  and  swear  brothers. 
1890 


THE   WHOLE   DUTY   OF   CRITICS 


criticism  was 
originally  benignant,  point 
ing  out  the  beauties  of  a 
work  rather  than  its  de 
fects.  The  passions  of  man 
have  made  it  malignant,  as  the  bad  heart 
of  Procrustes  turned  the  bed,  the  symbol 
of  repose,  into  an  instrument  of  torture." 
So  wrote  Longfellow  a  many  years  ago, 
thinking,  it  may  be,  on  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers,  or  on  the  Jedburgh 
justice  of  Jeffrey.  But  we  may  question 
whether  the  poet  did  not  unduly  idealize 
the  past,  as  is  the  custom  of  poets,  and 
whether  he  did  not  unfairly  asperse  the 
present.  With  the  general  softening  of 
manners,  no  doubt  those  of  the  critic 
have  improved  also.  Surely,  since  a  time 
whereof  the  memory  of  man  runneth  not 
to  the  contrary,  "  to  criticise,"  in  the  ears 
of  many,  if  not  of  most,  has  been  synony- 


mous  with  "  to  find  fault."  In  Farquhar's 
'  Inconstant,"  now  nearly  two  hundred 
years  old,  Petit  says  of  a  certain  lady: 
"  She's  a  critic,  sir ;  she  hates  a  jest,  for 
fear  it  should  please  her." 

The  critics  themselves  are  to  blame  for 
this  misapprehension  of  their  attitude. 
When  Mr.  Arthur  Pendennis  wrote  re 
views  for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  he  settled 
the  poet's  claims  as  though  he  "  were  my 
lord  on  the  bench  and  the  author  a  mis 
erable  little  suitor  trembling  before  him." 
The  critic  of  this  sort  acts  not  only  as 
judge  and  jury,  first  finding  the  author 
guilty  and  then  putting  on  the  black  cap 
to  sentence  him  to  the  gallows,  but  he 
often  volunteers  as  executioner  also,  lay 
ing  on  a  round  dozen  lashes  with  his  own 
hand,  and  with  a  hearty  good-will.  We 
are  told,  for  example,  that  Captain  Shan- 
don  knew  the  crack  of  Warrington's  whip 
and  the  cut  his  thong  left.  Bludyer  went 
to  work  like  a  butcher  and  mangled  his 
subject,  but  Warrington  finished  a  man, 
laying  "  his  cuts  neat  and  regular,  straight 
down  the  back,  and  drawing  blood  every 
time." 

Whenever  I  recall  this  picture  I  under 
stand  the  protest  of  one  of  the  most  acute 


and  subtle  of  American  critics,  who  told 
me  that  he  did  not  much  mind  what  was 
said  about  his  articles  so  long  as  they 
were  not  called  "trenchant."  Perhaps 
trenchant  is  the  adjective  which  best  de 
fines  what  true  criticism  is  not.  True 
criticism,  so  Joubert  tells  us,  is  un  ex- 
ercice  methodique  de  discernement.  It  is 
an  effort  to  understand  and  to  explain. 
The  true  critic  is  no  more  an  executioner 
than  he  is  an  assassin  ;  he  is  rather  a  seer, 
sent  forward  to  spy  out  the  land,  and  most 
useful  when  he  comes  back  bringing  a  good 
report  and  bearing  a  full  cluster  of  grapes. 
La  critique  sans  bonte  trouble  le  gout 
et  empoisonne  les  saveurs,  said  Joubert 
again ;  unkindly  criticism  disturbs  the 
taste  and  poisons  the  savor.  No  one  of 
the  great  critics  was  unkindly.  That  Ma- 
caulay  mercilessly  flayed  Montgomery  is 
evidence,  were  any  needed,  that  Macau- 
lay  was  not  one  of  the  great  critics.  The 
tomahawk  and  the  scalping-knife  are  not 
the  critical  apparatus,  and  they  are  not  to 
be  found  in  the  armory  of  Lessing  and  of 
Sainte-Beuve,  of  Matthew  Arnold  and  of 
James  Russell  Lowell.  It  is  only  inci 
dentally  that  these  devout  students  of 
letters  find  fault.  Though  they  may  ban 


now  and  again,  they  came  to  bless.  They 
chose  their  subjects,  for  the  most  part,  be 
cause  they  loved  these,  and  were  eager  to 
praise  them  and  to  make  plain  to  the 
world  the  reasons  for  their  ardent  affec 
tion.  Whenever  they  might  chance  to 
see  incompetence  and  pretension  pushing 
to  the  front,  they  shrugged  their  shoul 
ders  more  often  than  not,  and  passed  by 
on  the  other  side  silently  :— and  so  best. 
Very  rarely  did  they  cross  over  to  expose 
an  impostor. 

Lessing  waged  war  upon  theories  of  art, 
but  he  kept  up  no  fight  with  individual  au 
thors.  Sainte-Beuve  sought  to  paint  the 
portrait  of  the  man  as  he  was,  warts  and 
all ;  but  he  did  not  care  for  a  sitter  who 
was  not  worth  the  most  loving  art.  Mat 
thew  Arnold  was  swift  to  find  the  joints 
in  his  opponent's  armor ;  but  there  is 
hardly  one  of  his  essays  in  criticism  which 
had  not  its  exciting  cause  in  his  admira 
tion  for  its  subject.  Mr.  Lowell  has  not 
always  hidden  his  scorn  of  a  sham,  and 
sometimes  he  has  scourged  it  with  a  sin? 
gle  sharp  phrase.  Generally,  however, 
even  the  humbugs  get  off  scot-free,  for 
the  true  critic  knows  that  time  will  at 
tend  to  these  fellows,  and  there  is  rarely 


u8 


any  need  to  lend  a  hand.  It  was  Bentley 
who  said  that  no  man  was  ever  written 
down  save  by  himself. 

The  late  Edouard  Schereronce  handled 
M.  Emile  Zola  without  gloves;  and  M. 
Jules  Lemaitre  has  made  M.  Georges 
Ohnet  the  target  of  his  flashing  wit.  But 
each  of  these  attacks  attained  notoriety 
from  its  unexpectedness.  And  what  has 
been  gained  in  either  case  ?  Since  Scher- 
er  fell  foul  of  him,  M.  Zola  has  written 
his  strongest  novel,  Germinal  (one  of  the 
most  powerful  tales  of  this  century),  and 
his  rankest  story,  La  Terre  (one  of  the 
most  offensive  fictions  in  all  the  history 
of  literature).  M.  Lemaitre's  brilliant  as 
sault  on  M.  Ohnet  may  well  have  excited 
pity  for  the  wretched  victim  ;  and,  dam 
aging  as  it  was,  I  doubt  if  its  effect  is  as 
fatal  as  the  gentler  and  more  humorous 
criticism  of  M.  Anatole  France,  in  which 
the  reader  sees  contempt  slowly  gaining 
the  mastery  over  the  honest  critic's  kind 
liness. 

For  all  that  he  was  a  little  prim  in  taste 
and  a  little  arid  in  manner,  Scherer  had 
the  gift  of  appreciation — the  most  precious 
possession  of  any  critic.  M.  Lemaitre, 
despite  his  frank  enjoyment  of  his  own 


skill  in  fence,  has  a  faculty  of  hearty  ad 
miration.  There  are  thirteen  studies  in 
the  first  series  of  his  Contemporams,  and 
the  dissection  of  the  unfortunate  M.  Oh- 
net  is  the  only  one  in  which  the  critic 
does  not  handle  his  scalpel  with  loving 
care.  To  run  amuck  through  the  throng 
of  one's  fellow-craftsmen  is  not  a  sign  of 
sanity — on  the  contrary.  Depreciation  is 
cheaper  than  appreciation ;  and  criticism 
which  is  merely  destructive  is  essentially 
inferior  to  criticism  which  is  constructive. 
That  he  saw  so  little  to  praise  is  greatly 
against  Poe's  claim  to  be  taken  seriously 
as  a  critic ;  so  is  his  violence  of  speech  ; 
and  so  also  is  the  fact  that  those  whom  he 
lauded  might  be  as  little  deserving  of  his 
eulogy  as  those  whom  he  assailed  were 
worthy  of  his  condemnation.  The  habit  of 
intemperate  attack  which  grew  on  Poe  is 
foreign  to  the  serene  calm  of  the  higher 
criticism.  F.  D.  Maurice  made  the  shrewd 
remark  that  the  critics  who  take  pleasure 
in  cutting  up  mean  books  soon  deteriorate 
themselves  —  subdued  to  that  they  work 
in.  It  may  be  needful,  once  in  a  way,  to 
nail  vermin  to  the  barn  door  as  a  warning, 
and  thus  we  may  seek  a  reason  for  Ma- 
caulay's  cruel  treatment  of  Montgomery, 


and  M.  Lemaitre's  pitiless  castigation  of 
M.  Ohnet.  But  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
or  rather  in  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred, 
the  attitude  of  the  critic  towards  con 
temporary  trash  had  best  be  one  of  abso 
lute  indifference,  sure  that  Time  will  sift 
out  what  is  good,  and  that  Time  winnows 
with  unerring  taste. 

The  duty  of  the  critic,  therefore,  is  to 
help  the  reader  to  "  get  the  best  " — in  the 
old  phrase  of  the  dictionary  venders — to 
choose  it,  to  understand  it,  to  enjoy  it. 
To  choose  it,  first  of  all ;  so  must  the  critic 
dwell  with  delighted  insistence  upon  the 
best  books,  drawing  attention  afresh  to 
the  old  and  discovering  the  new  with  alert 
vision.  Neglect  is  the  proper  portion  of 
the  worthless  books  of  the  hour,  whatever 
may  be  their  vogue  for  the  week  or  the 
month.  It  cannot  be  declared  too  fre 
quently  that  temporary  popularity  is  no 
sure  test  of  real  merit ;  else  were  Prover 
bial  Philosophy,  the  Light  of  Asia,  and 
the  Epic  of  Hades  the  foremost  British 
poems  since  the  decline  of  Robert  Mont 
gomery;  else  were  the  Lamplighter  (does 
any  one  read  the  Lamplighter  nowadays, 
I  wonder?),  Looking  Backward,  and  Mr. 
Barnes  of  New  York  the  typical  American 


novels.  No  one  can  insist  too  often  on 
the  distinction  between  what  is  "good 
enough  "  for  current  consumption  by  a 
careless  public  and  what  is  really  good, 
permanent,  and  secure.  No  one  can  de 
clare  with  too  much  emphasis  the  differ 
ence  between  what  is  literature  and  what 
is  not  literature,  nor  the  width  of  the  gulf 
which  separates  them.  A  critic  who  has 
not  an  eye  single  to  this  distinction  fails 
of  his  duty.  Perhaps  the  best  way  to 
make  the  distinction  plain  to  the  reader 
is  to  persist  in  discussing  what  is  vital  and 
enduring,  pointedly  passing  over  what  may 
happen  to  be  accidentally  popular. 

Yet  the  critic  mischooses  who  should 
shut  himself  up  with  the  classics  of  all 
languages  and  in  rapt  contemplation  of 
their  beauties  be  blind  to  the  best  work 
of  his  own  time.  If  criticism  itself  is  to 
be  seen  of  men,  it  must  enter  the  arena 
and  bear  a  hand  in  the  combat.  The 
books  which  have  come  down  to  us  from 
our  fathers  and  from  our  grandfathers  are 
a  blessed  heritage,  no  doubt ;  but  there 
are  a  few  books  of  like  value  to  be  picked 
out  of  those  which  we  of  to-day  shall  pass 
along  to  our  children  and  to  our  grand 
children.  It  may  be  even  that  some  of 


our  children  are  beginning  already  to  set 
down  in  black  and  white  their  impressions 
of  life,  with  a  skill  and  with  a  truth  which 
shall  in  due  season  make  them  classics 
also.  Sainte-Beuve  asserted  that  the  real 
triumph  of  the  critic  was  when  the  poets 
whose  praises  he  had  sounded  and  for 
whom  he  had  fought  grew  in  stature  and 
surpassed  themselves,  keeping,  and  more 
than  keeping,  the  magnificent  promises 
which  the  critic,  as  their  sponsor  in  bap 
tism,  had  made  for  them.  Besides  the 
criticism  of  the  classics,  grave,  learned, 
definitive,  there  is  another  more  alert,  said 
Sainte  -  Beuve,  more  in  touch  with  the 
spirit  of  the  hour,  more  lightly  equipped, 
it  may  be,  and  yet  more  willing  to  find 
answers  for  the  questions  of  the  day. 
This  more  vivacious  criticism  chooses 
its  heroes  and  encompasses  them  about 
with  its  affection,  using  boldly  the  words 
"genius"  and  "glory,"  however  much 
this  may  scandalize  the  lookers-on  : 

"  Nous  tiendrons,  pour  lutter  dans  1'arene  lyrique, 
Toi  la  lance,  moi  les  coursiers." 

To  few  critics  is  it  given  to  prophesy 
the  lyric  supremacy  of  a  Victor  Hugo— it 
was  in  a  review  of  Les  Femlles  d'Automne 


1*3 


that  Sainte-Beuve  made  this  declaration 
of  principles.  A  critic  lacking  the  in 
sight  and  the  equipment  of  Sainte-Beuve 
may  unduly  despise  an  Ugly  Duckling,  or 
he  may  mistake  a  Goose  for  a  Swan,  only 
to  wait  in  vain  for  its  song.  Indeed,  to 
set  out  of  malice  prepense  to  discover  a 
genius  is  but  a  wild-goose  chase  at  best ; 
and  though  the  sport  is  pleasant  for  those 
who  follow,  it  may  be  fatal  to  the  chance 
fowl  who  is  expected  to  lay  a  golden  egg. 
Longfellow's  assertion  that  "  critics  are 
sentinels  in  the  grand  army  of  letters, 
stationed  at  the  corners  of  newspapers 
and  reviews  to  challenge  every  new  au 
thor,"  may  not  be  altogether  acceptable, 
but  it  is  at  least  the  duty  of  the  soldier 
to  make  sure  of  the  papers  of  those  who 
seek  to  enlist  in  the  garrison. 

"  British  criticism  has  always  been  more 
or  less  parochial,"  said  Lowell,  many  years 
ago,  before  he  had  been  American  Min 
ister  at  St.  James's.  "  It  cannot  quite 
persuade  itself  that  truth  is  of  immortal 
essence,  totally  independent  of  all  assist 
ance  from  quarterly  journals  or  the  Brit 
ish  army  and  navy."  No  doubt  there  has 
been  a  decided  improvement  in  the  temper 
of  British  criticism  since  this  was  written  ; 


124 


it  is  less  parochial  than  it  was,  and  it  is 
perhaps  now  one  of  its  faults  that  it  af 
fects  a  cosmopolitanism  to  which  it  does 
not  attain.  But  even  now  an  American 
of  literary  taste  is  simply  staggered — there 
is  no  other  word  for  it — whenever  he  reads 
the  weekly  reviews  of  contemporary  fic 
tion  in  the  Athenceum,  the  Academy,  the 
Spectator,  and  the  Saturday  Review,  and 
when  he  sees  high  praise  bestowed  on 
novels  so  poor  that  no  American  pirate 
imperils  his  salvation  to  reprint  them. 
The  encomiums  bestowed,  for  example, 
upon  such  tales  as  those  which  are  writ 
ten  by  the  ladies  who  call  themselves 
"  Rita  "  and  "  The  Duchess  "  and  "  The 
Authoress  of  The  House  on  the  Marsh," 
seem  hopelessly  uncritical.  The  writers 
of  most  of  these  reviews  are  sadly  lack 
ing  in  literary  perception  and  in  literary 
perspective.  The  readers  of  these  re 
views — if  they  had  no  other  sources  of  in 
formation — would  never  suspect  that  the 
novel  of  England  is  no  longer  what  it  was 
once,  and  that  it  is  now  inferior  in  art  to 
the  novel  of  France,  of  Spain,  and  of 
America.  If  the  petty  minnows  are  mag 
nified  thus,  what  lens  will  serve  fitly  to 
reproduce  the  lordly  salmon  or  the  stal- 


125 


wart  tarpon  ?  Those  who  praise  the  sec 
ond-rate  or  the  tenth-rate  in  terms  ap 
propriate  only  to  the  first-rate  are  derelict 
to  the  first  duty  of  the  critic — which  is  to 
help  the  reader  to  choose  the  best. 

And  the  second  duty  of  the  critic  is 
like  unto  the  first.  It  is  to  help  the  read 
er  to  understand  the  best.  There  is  many 
a  book  which  needs  to  be  made  plain  to 
him  who  runs  as  he  reads,  and  it  is  the 
running  reader  of  these  hurried  years  that 
the  critic  must  needs  address.  There  are 
not  a  few  works  of  high  merit  (although 
none,  perhaps,  of  the  very  highest)  which 
gain  by  being  explained,  even  as  Philip 
expounded  Esaias  to  the  eunuch  of  Can- 
dace,  Queen  of  the  Ethiopians,  getting 
up  into  his  chariot  and  guiding  him. 
Perhaps  it  is  paradoxical  to  suggest  that 
a  book  of  the  very  highest  class  is  per 
force  clear  beyond  all  need  of  commen 
tary  or  exposition ;  but  it  is  indisputable 
that  familiarity  may  blur  the  outline  and 
use  may  wear  away  the  sharp  edges,  until 
we  no  longer  see  the  masterpiece  as  dis 
tinctly  as  we  might,  nor  do  we  regard  it 
with  the  same  interest.  Here  again  the 
critic  finds  his  opportunity  ;  he  may  show 
the  perennial  freshness  of  that  which 


126 


seemed  for  a  while  withered  ;  and  he  may 
interpret  again  the  meaning  of  the  mes 
sage  an  old  book  may  bring  to  a  new  gen 
eration.  Sometimes  this  message  is  val 
uable  and  yet  invisible  from  the  outside, 
like  the  political  pamphlets  which  were 
smuggled  into  the  France  of  the  Second 
Empire  concealed  in  the  hollow  plaster 
busts  of  Napoleon  III.,  but  ready  to  the 
hand  that  knew  how  to  extract  them 
adroitly  at  the  proper  time. 

The  third  duty  of  the  critic,  after  aid 
ing  the  reader  to  choose  the  best  and  to 
understand  it,  is  to  help  him  to  enjoy  it. 
This  is  possible  only  when  the  critic's  own 
enjoyment  is  acute  enough  to  be  conta 
gious.  However  well  informed  a  critic 
may  be,  and  however  keen  he  may  be,  if 
he  be  not  capable  of  the  cordial  admira 
tion  which  warms  the  heart,  his  criticism 
is  wanting.  A  critic  whose  enthusiasm  is 
not  catching  lacks  the  power  of  dissemi 
nating  his  opinions.  His  judgment  may  be 
excellent,  but  his  influence  remains  nega 
tive.  One  torch  may  light  many  a  fire ;  and 
how  far  a  little  candle  throws  its  beams ! 
Perhaps  the  ability  to  take  an  intense 
delight  in  another  man's  work,  and  the 
willingness  to  express  this  delight  frankly 


I27 


and  fully,  are  two  of  the  characteristics 
of  the  true  critic ;  of  a  certainty  they  are 
the  characteristics  most  frequently  ab 
sent  in  the  criticaster.  Consider  how 
Sainte-Beuve  and  Matthew  Arnold  and 
Lowell  have  sung  the  praises  of  those 
whose  poems  delighted  them.  Note  how 
Mr.  Henry  James  and  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 
are  affected  by  the  talents  of  M.  Al- 
phonse  Daudet  and  of  M.  Guy  de  Mau 
passant. 

Having  done  his  duty  to  the  reader, 
the  critic  has  done  his  full  duty  to  the 
author  also.  It  is  to  the  people  at  large 
that  the  critic  is  under  obligations,  not  to 
any  individual.  As  he  cannot  take  cog 
nizance  of  a  work  of  art,  literary  or  dra 
matic,  plastic  or  pictorial,  until  after  it  is 
wholly  complete,  his  opinion  can  be  of 
little  benefit  to  the  author.  A  work  of 
art  is  finally  finished  when  it  comes  before 
the  public,  and  the  instances  are  very  few 
indeed  when  an  author  has  ever  thought 
it  worth  while  to  modify  the  form  in 
which  it  was  first  presented  to  the  world. 
A  work  of  science,  on  the  other  hand, 
depending  partly  on  the  exactness  of  the 
facts  which  it  sets  forth  and  on  which  it 
is  founded,  may  gain  from  the  suggested 


emendations  of  a  critic.  Many  a  history, 
many  a  law  book,  many  a  scientific  trea 
tise  has  been  bettered  in  successive  edi 
tions  by  hints  gleaned  here  and  there 
from  the  reviews  of  experts. 

But  the  work  of  art  stands  on  a  wholly 
different  footing  from  the  work  of  science ; 
and  the  critics  have  no  further  duty  tow 
ards  the  author,  except,  of  course,  to  treat 
him  fairly,  and  to  present  him  to  the 
public  if  they  deem  him  worthy  of  this 
honor.  The  novel  or  the  poem  being 
done  once  for  all,  it  is  hardly  possible  for 
critics  to  be  of  any  use  to  the  novelist  or 
to  the  poet  personally.  The  artist  of  ex 
perience  makes  up  his  mind  to  this,  and 
accepts  criticism  as  something  which  has 
little  or  nothing  to  do  with  his  work,  but 
which  may  materially  affect  his  position 
before  the  public.  Thackeray,  who  un 
derstood  the  feelings  and  the  failings  of 
the  literary  man  as  no  one  else,  has  shown 
us  Mr.  Arthur  Pendennis  reading  the 
newspaper  notices  of  his  novel,  Walter 
Lorraine,  and  sending  them  home  to  his 
mother.  "  Their  censure  did  not  much 
affect  him  ;  for  the  good-natured  young 
man  was  disposed  to  accept  with  consid 
erable  humility  the  dispraise  of  others. 


I29 


Nor  did  their  praise  elate  him  overmuch; 
for,  like  most  honest  persons,  he  had  his 
own  opinion  about  his  own  performance, 
and  when  a  critic  praised  him  in  the  wrong 
place  he  was  hurt  rather  than  pleased  by 
the  compliment." 

Mr.  James  tells  us  that  the  author  of 
Smoke  and  Fathers  and  Sons,  a  far  greater 
novelist  than  the  author  of  Walter  Lor 
raine,  had  a  serene  indifference  towards 
criticism.  Turgenef  gave  Mr.  James  "  the 
impression  of  thinking  of  criticism  as 
most  serious  workers  think  of  it — that  it 
is  the  amusement,  the  exercise,  the  sub 
sistence  of  the  critic  (and,  so  far  as  this 
goes,  of  immense  use),  but  that,  though 
it  may  often  concern  other  readers,  it 
does  not  much  concern  the  artist  himself." 
Though  criticism  is  of  little  use  to  the 
author  directly,  it  can  be  of  immense  serv 
ice  to  him  indirectly,  if  it  be  exposition 
rather  than  comment ;  not  a  bald  and 
barren  attempt  at  classification,  but  a 
sympathetic  interpretation.  At  bottom, 
sympathy  is  the  prime  requisite  of  the 
critic  ;  and  with  sympathy  come  appre 
ciation,  penetration,  revelation — such,  for 
example,  as  the  American  novelist  has 
shown  in  his  criticisms  of  the  Russian. 

9 


I30 


There  is  one  kind  of  review  of  no  bene 
fit  either  to  the  author  or  to  the  public. 
This  is  the  careless,  perfunctory  book-no 
tice,  penned  hastily  by  a  tired  writer,  who 
does  not  take  the  trouble  to  formulate  his 
opinion,  and  perhaps  not  even  to  form  one. 
Towards  the  end  of  1889  there  appeared 
in  a  British  weekly  the  following  notice 
of  a  volume  of  American  short  stories  : 

"  A  littery  gent  in  one  of  Mr.  [ ]'s  short  stories 

says :  '  A  good  idea  for  a  short  story  is  a  shy  bird,  and 
doesn't  come  for  the  calling.'  Alas!  alas!  it  is  true. 
The  French  can  call  a  great  deal  better  than  we  can; 
but  the  Americans,  it  would  seem,  cannot.  The  best  of 

Mr.  [ ]'s  stories  is  the  first,  about  a  tree  which  grew 

out  of  the  bosom  of  a  buried  suicide,  and  behaved  accord 
ingly  to  his  descendants ;  but,  so  far  from  being  a  short 
story,  it  is  a  long  one,  extending  over  some  hundreds  of 
years,  and  it  suffers  from  the  compression  which  Mr. 
[ ]  puts  upon  it.  It  deserves  to  have  a  volume  to  it 
self." 

Refraining  from  all  remark  upon  the 
style  in  which  this  paragraph  is  written 
or  upon  the  taste  of  the  writer,  I  desire 
to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  it  is  not 
what  it  purports  to  be.  It  is  not  a  criti 
cism  within  the  accepted  meaning  of  the 
word.  It  indicates  no  intellectual  effort 
on  the  part  of  its  writer  to  understand  the 
author  of  the  book.  An  author  would 
need  to  be  superlatively  sensitive  who 


could  take  offence  at  this  paragraph,  and 
an  author  who  could  find  pleasure  in  it 
would  have  to  be  unspeakably  vain.  To 
me  this  notice  seems  the  absolute  nega 
tion  of  criticism  —  mere  words  with  no 
suggestion  of  a  thought  behind  them. 
The  man  who  dashed  this  off  robbed  the 
author  of  a  criticism  to  which  he  was  en 
titled  if  the  book  was  worth  reviewing  at 
all ;  and  in  thus  shirking  his  bounden 
duty  he  also  cheated  the  proprietor  of 
the  paper  who  paid  him.  Empty  para 
graphing  of  this  offensive  character  is 
commoner  now  than  it  was  a  few  years 
ago,  commoner  in  Great  Britain  than  in 
the  United  States,  and  commoner  in  anon 
ymous  articles  than  in  those  warranted 
by  the  signature  of  the  writer.  Probably 
the  man  who  was  guilty  of  this  innocu 
ous  notice  would  have  been  ashamed  to 
put  his  name  to  it. 

If  a  book  is  so  empty  that  there  is  noth 
ing  to  say  about  it,  then  there  is  no  need 
to  say  anything.  It  is  related  that  when 
a  dramatist,  who  was  reading  a  play  be 
fore  the  Committee  of  the  Corned ie  Fran- 
gatse,  rebuked  M.  Got  for  slumbering 
peacefully  during  this  ceremony,  the  emi 
nent  comedian  answered  promptly, "  Sleep, 


132 


Monsieur,  is  also  an  opinion."  If  a  book 
puts  the  critic  to  sleep,  or  so  benumbs 
his  faculties  that  he  finds  himself  speech 
less,  he  has  no  call  to  proceed  further  in 
the  matter.  Perhaps  the  author  may  take 
heart  of  grace  when  he  remembers  that 
of  all  Shakespeare's  characters,  it  was 
the  one  with  the  ass's  head  who  had  an 
exposition  of  sleep  come  upon  him,  as  it 
was  the  one  with  the  blackest  heart  who 
said  he  was  nothing  if  not  critical. 

If  I  were  to  attempt  to  draw  up  Twelve 
Good  Rules  for  Reviewers,  I  should  be 
gin  with : 

I.  Form  an  honest  opinion. 

II.  Express  it  honestly. 

III.  Don't  review  a  book  which  you 
cannot  take  seriously. 

IV.  Don't  review  a  book  with  which 
you  are  out  of  sympathy.     That  is  to  say, 
put  yourself  in  the  author's   place,  and 
try  to  see  his  work  from  his  point  of  view, 
which  is  sure  to  be  a  coign  of  vantage. 

V.  Stick  to  the  text.    Review  the  book 
before  you,  and  not  the  book  some  other 
author  might  have  written ;  obiter  dicta 
are  as  valueless  from  the  critic  as  from 
the  judge.     Don't  go  off  on  a  tangent. 
And  also  don't  go  round  in  a  circle.    Say 


133 


what  you  have  to  say,  and  stop.  Don't 
go  on  writing  about  and  about  the  sub 
ject,  and  merely  weaving  garlands  of  flow 
ers  of  rhetoric. 

VI.  Beware  of  the   Sham  Sample,  as 
Charles  Reade  called  it.     Make  sure  that 
the  specimen  bricks  you  select  for  quota 
tion  do  not  give  a  false  impression  of  the 
facade,  and   not   only  of   the   elevation 
merely,  but  of  the  perspective  also,  and  of 
the  ground-plan. 

VII.  In  reviewing  a  biography  or  a  his 
tory,  criticise  the  book  before  you,  and 
don't  write  a  parallel  essay,  for  which  the 
volume  you  have  in  hand  serves  only  as 
a  peg. 

VIII.  In  reviewing  a  work  of  fiction, 
don't  give  away  the  plot.   I  n  the  eyes  of  the 
novelist  this  is  the  unpardonable  sin.  And, 
as  it  discounts  the  pleasure  of  the  reader 
also,  it  is  almost  equally  unkind  to  him. 

IX.  Don't  try  to  prove  every  success 
ful  author  a  plagiarist.     It  may  be  that 
many  a  successful  author  has  been  a  pla 
giarist,  but  no  author  ever  succeeded  be 
cause  of  his  plagiary. 

X.  Don't  break  a  butterfly  on  a  wheel. 
If  a  book  is  not  worth  much,  it  is  not 
worth  reviewing. 


134 


XI.  Don't  review  a  book  as  an  east 
wind  would  review  an  apple-tree — so  it 
was  once  said  Douglas  Jerrold  was  wont 
to  do.    Of  what  profit  to  any  one  is  mere 
bitterness  and  vexation  of  spirit  ? 

XII.  Remember  that  the  critic's  duty 
is  to  the  reader  mainly,  and  that  it  is  to 
guide  him  not  only  to  what  is  good,  but 
to  what  is  best.     Three  parts  of  what  is 
contemporary  must  be  temporary  only. 

Having  in  the  past  now  and  again  fall 
en  from  grace  myself  and  written  criti 
cism,  I  know  that  on  such  occasions  these 
Twelve  Good  Rules  would  have  been  ex 
ceedingly  helpful  to  me  had  I  then  pos 
sessed  them ;  therefore  I  offer  them  now 
hopefully  to  my  fellow -critics.  But  I 
find  myself  in  a  state  of  humility  (to  which 
few  critics  are  accustomed),  and  I  doubt 
how  far  my  good  advice  will  be  heeded. 
I  remember  that,  after  reporting  the 
speech  in  which  Poor  Richard's  maxims 
were  all  massed  together,  Franklin  tells 
us  that  "thus  the  old  gentleman  ended 
his  harangue.  The  people  heard  it  and 
approved  the  doctrine ;  and  immediately 
practised  the  contrary,  just  as  if  it  had 
been  a  common  sermon." 

1890 


THREE   AMERICAN   ESSAYISTS 

WHOEVER  wishes  to  attain 
an  English  style,  familiar 
but  not  coarse,  and  elegant 
but  not  ostentatious,  must 
give  his  days  and  nights 
to  the  study  of  Addison,"  said  Doctor 
Johnson  a  many  years  ago ;  and  Doctor 
Johnson's  own  style,  elaborate  if  not  ar 
tificial,  and  orotund  if  not  polysyllabic, 
might  no  doubt  have  been  improved  if 
the  writer  of  the  Rambler  had  given  more 
of  his  days  and  nights  to  the  study  of  the 
chief  writer  of  the  Spectator.  Doctor 
Johnson's  advice  is  still  quoted  often, 
perhaps  it  is  still  followed  sometimes. 
Yet  it  is  outworn  and  not  for  to-day. 
We  have  nowadays  better  weapons  than 
the  Brown  Bess  Johnson  appreciated  so 
highly — breech-loading  rifles  incompara 
bly  superior  to  the  smooth-bore  he  praises. 
Owing  in  part,  no  doubt,  to  the  influence 


136 


of  Addison  and  to  the  advice  of  Johnson, 
we  have  had  writers  of  late  whose  style 
is  easier  than  Addison's,  more  graceful, 
more  varied,  more  precise.  Set  a  page 
of  one  of  Addison's  little  apologues  be 
side  a  page  of  one  of  Hawthorne's  tales, 
and  note  how  much  more  pellucid  Haw 
thorne's  style  is,  how  much  more  beauti 
ful,  how  much  more  distinguished.  Con 
trast  one  of  Addison's  criticisms  with  one 
of  Matthew  Arnold's,  and  observe  not 
only  how  much  more  complete  is  the  ter 
minology  of  the  art  now  than  it  was  when 
the  Spectator  was  appearing  twice  a  week, 
but  also  how  much  more  acute  and  how 
much  more  flexible  the  mind  of  the  later 
critic  than  the  mind  of  the  earlier. 

Compare  Addison's  essays  with  those 
which  Mr.  George  William  Curtis  has  re 
cently  collected  into  a  volume,  From  the 
Easy  Chair,  and  you  will  see  no  reason  to 
adopt  any  theory  of  literary  degeneracy 
in  our  day.  We  are  all  of  us  the  heirs 
of  the  ages,  no  doubt,  but  it  is  in  an  un 
usual  degree  that  Mr.  Curtis  is  the  inher 
itor  of  the  best  traditions  of  the  Eng 
lish  essay.  He  is  the  direct  descendant 
of  Addison,  whose  style  is  overrated  ;  of 
Steele,  whose  morality  is  humorous ;  of 


137 


Goldsmith,  whose  writing  was  angelic, 
and  of  Irving,  whose  taste  was  pretty. 
Mr.  Curtis  recalls  all  of  these,  yet  he  is 
like  none  of  them.  Humorous  as  they 
are  and  charming,  he  is  somewhat  stur 
dier,  of  a  more  robust  fibre,  with  a  strong 
er  respect  for  plain  living  and  high  think 
ing,  with  a  firmer  grasp  on  the  duties  of* 
life. 

For  the  most  part  these  essays  of  Mr. 
Curtis's  are  pleasant  papers  of  reminis 
cence,  of  gentle  moralizing,  and  of  kindly 
satire ;  but  he  is  a  swift  and  a  careless 
reader  who  does  not  detect  the  underly 
ing  preachment  which  is  at  the  core  of 
most  of  them.  Mr.  Curtis  is  not  content 
to  scourge  lightly  the  snobbery  and  the 
vulgarity  which  cling  to  the  fringe  of 
fashion,  and  sometimes  get  nearer  to  the 
centre  of  society ;  he  also  sets  up  a  high 
standard  of  morality  in  public  life.  The 
divorce  between  Politics  and  Society — in 
the  narrower  meaning  of  the  words  —  is 
not  wholesome  for  either  party.  Mr.  Cur 
tis  reminds  us  that  "good  government  is 
one  of  the  best  things  in  the  world,"  and 
that  the  wise  man  "  knows  that  good 
things  of  that  kind  are  not  cheap."  This 
is  a  quotation  from  the  highly  instructive 


'38 


and  permanently  pertinent  paper  on  "Ho- 
nestus  at  the  Caucus,"  which  begins  with 
the  assertion  that  "a  man  who  is  easily 
discouraged,  who  is  not  willing  to  put  the 
good  seed  out  of  sight  and  wait  for  re 
sults,  who  desponds  if  he  cannot  obtain 
everything  at  once,  and  who  thinks  the 
human  race  lost  if  he  is  disappointed,  will 
be  very  unhappy  if  he  persists  in  taking 
part  in  politics.  There  is  no  sphere  in 
which  self-deception  is  easier." 

There  are  but  few  essays  with  a  politi 
cal  intention  in  this  delightful  little  book. 
The  rest  are  papers  mainly  about  people, 
about  "Edward  Everett  in  1862,"  and 
about  "  Emerson  Lecturing,"  and  about 
"  Dickens  Reading,"  and  about  "  Robert 
Browning  in  Florence,"  and  about  "Wen 
dell  Phillips  at  Harvard,"  and  about  "  A 
Little  Dinner  with  Thackeray,"  and  about 
Thoreau,  who  had  "  a  staccato  style  of 
speech,  every  word  coming  separately  and 
distinctly  as  if  preserving  the  same  cool 
isolation  in  the  sentence  that  the  speaker 
did  in  society."  Not  a  few  of  them  have 
to  do  with  the  players  of  the  past,  with 
the  vocalists  who  are  now  but  memories 
of  dead  and  gone  delight,  with  the  per 
formers  on  musical  instruments — "  Thai- 


139 


berg  and  other  Pianists,"  "At  the  Opera  in 
1 864,"  "Jenny  Lind."  Was  the  gentle  Jen 
ny  Lind  really  a  vocalist,  or  was  she  only  a 
singer  of  songs,  unforgetable  now  because 
she  sang  them  ?  As  we  read  these  re 
minders  of  past  delights  we  find  ourselves 
wondering  how  Jenny  Lind  would  please 
the  denizens  of  certain  Unmusical  Boxes 
at  the  Metropolitan  Opera-house,  "who 
have  an  insatiable  desire  to  proceed  with 
their  intellectual  cultivation  by  audible 
conversation  during  the  performance." 

In  the  thick  of  the  tussle  of  life  here 
in  this  huge  city  of  ours,  where  strident 
voices  fill  the  market-place,  the  mellow 
note  of  the  essayist  is  heard  distinctly  as 
he  leans  back  in  his  Easy  Chair,  modu 
lating  every  syllable  with  exquisite  fe 
licity.  And  perhaps  the  author  of  the 
Potiphar  Papers  is  in  his  way  quite  as 
characteristic  of  New  York  as  any  of  the 
more  self-seeking  notorieties  who  din 
into  our  ears  the  catalogue  of  their  mer 
its.  In  a  great  city  there  is  room  for  all, 
for  the  boss  and  the  heeler  and  the  tough, 
as  well  as  for  the  Tatler,  the  Spectator, 
the  Idler,  the  Rambler,  and  the  Citizen 
of  the  World. 

A  citizen  of  the  world,  Mr.  Curtis  is, 


beyond  all  question,  really  cosmopolitan  ; 
and,  as  Colonel  Higginson  told  us  a  dozen 
years  ago,  "to  be  really  cosmopolitan  a 
man  must  be  at  home  even  in  his  own 
country."  When  Colonel  Higginson  came 
to  New  York  last  year  to  deliver  before  the 
Nineteenth  Century  Club  the  lecture  on 
The  New  World  and  the  New  Book,  which 
gives  its  title  to  a  recent  collection  of 
his  essays,  this  epigram  was  quoted  by 
the  president  of  the  club  in  introducing 
the  speaker  of  the  evening.  It  is  per 
haps  now  the  best  known  of  Colonel  Hig- 
ginson's  many  sharp  sayings  ;  it  is  better 
known  probably  than  his  assertion  that 
the  American  has  "  a  drop  more  of  nerv 
ous  fluid  "  than  the  Englishman — an  as 
sertion  which  Matthew  Arnold  failed  to 
understand  but  did  not  fail  to  denounce. 
No  doubt  it  is  hard  for  a  writer  as  witty 
as  Colonel  Higginson  to  find  one  or  two 
of  his  acute  sentences  quivering  in  the 
public  memory,  while  others  as  well  aim 
ed  fall  off  idly.  But  it  is  with  the  epi 
gram  as  with  the  lyric  ;  we  shoot  an  ar 
row  in  the  air,  it  falls  to  earth  we  know 
not  where ;  and  we  can  rarely  foretell 
which  shaft  is  going  to  split  the  willow 
wand. 


Colonel  Higginson  need  not  be  ashamed 
to  go  down  to  posterity  as  the  author  of 
one  phrase,  for  many  a  writer  is  saved 
from  oblivion  by  a  single  apothegm  ;  nor 
need  he  be  afraid  of  this  fate,  for  there 
are  "good  things"  a-plenty  in  this  new 
volume,  and  some  of  them  are  certain  to 
do  good  service  in  international  combat, 
and  to  go  hustling  across  the  Atlantic 
again  and  again.  There  is  an  arsenal  of 
epigram  in  the  little  essay  called  "  Weap 
ons  of  Precision,"  and  it  is  pleasant  to 
see  that  their  effective  range  is  more  than 
3000  miles.  At  that  distance  they  have 
already  wounded  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  and 
forced  from  him  a  cry  of  pain.  So  sensi 
tive  did  Mr.  Lang  show  himself  to  these 
transatlantic  darts  that  he  allowed  him 
self  to  reveal  his  ignorance  of  Colonel 
Higginson 's  work,  ,of  the  Peabody  Mu 
seum,  and  of  various  other  men  and  things 
in  America — a  knowledge  of  which  was 
a  condition  precedent  to  debate  on  the 
question. 

This  question  is  very  simple :  Is  there 
such  a  man  as  an  American?  Has  he 
ever  done  anything  justifying  his  exist 
ence  ?  Or  is  he  simply  a  second-rate,  ex 
patriated  Englishman,  a  colonist  who  is 


to  say  ditto  forever  and  a  day  ?  If  we  are 
only  debased  duplicates  of  the  Poor  Isl 
anders,  then  our  experiment  here  is  a 
failure,  and  our  continued  existence  is  not 
worth  while.  If  we  are  something  other 
than  English,  then  it  may  be  as  well  to 
understand  ourselves,  and  to  throw  off 
any  lingering  bond  of  colonialism.  This 
is  what  Colonel  Higginson's  book  was 
intended  to  help  us  to  do.  "  Nothing  is 
further,"  he  has  said  in  his  preface,  from 
his  "  wish  than  to  pander  to  any  petty  na 
tional  vanity,"  his  sole  desire  being  to  as 
sist  in  creating  a  modest  and  reasonable 
self-respect.  "  The  Civil  War  bequeathed 
to  us  Americans,  twenty-five  years  ago,  a 
great  revival  of  national  feeling  ;  but  this 
has  been  followed  in  some  quarters,  dur 
ing  the  last  few  years,  by  a  curious  relapse 
into  something  of  the  old  colonial  and 
apologetic  attitude."  No  doubt  this  at 
titude  is  not  characteristic  of  the  best ;  it 
is  to  be  seen  only  in  the  East — chiefly  in 
New  York  and  in  Boston— chiefly  among 
the  half-educated,  for  the  man  of  wide 
culture  looks  for  light  rather  to  Paris 
and  Berlin  than  to  London. 

Colonel  Higginson  proves  abundantly, 
with  a  cloud  of  witnesses,  that  one  of  the 


differences  between  the  American  and  the 
Englishman  is  the  former's  greater  quick 
ness.  We  are  lighter  and  swifter  in  our 
appreciation  of  humor,  for  example.  In 
deed,  it  is  amusing  to  observe  that  we 
speak  of  the  English  as  obtuse  in  humor, 
just  as  they  speak  of  the  Scotch.  I  think 
that  Colonel  Higginson  succeeds  also  in 
showing  that  there  is  greater  fineness  of 
taste  in  literature  and  in  art  in  America; 
at  least  we  do  not  take  our  dime  novels 
seriously,  while  in  England  the  leading 
weekly  reviews  really  consider  the  stories 
of  Miss  Marryat  and  of  Mr.  Far j eon. 

Of  course  "  the  added  drop  of  nervous 
fluid  "  must  be  paid  for  somehow ;  in  all 
international  comparisons  the  great  law 
of  compensations  holds  good.  Recently 
a  leading  American  scientist  told  me  that 
he  thought  there  was,  in  American  scien 
tific  work,  a  lack  of  the  energy  he  had 
observed  in  the  English.  It  was  of  pure 
science  he  was  speaking ;  as  far  as  applied 
science  is  concerned,  there  seems  to  be  no 
lack  of  energy  visible  in  the  United  States. 
That  this  criticism  is  just  I  cannot  deny, 
having  no  wish  to  fall  into  the  pitfall  of 
discussing  a  subject  of  which  I  have  no 
knowledge  whatever.  But  if  there  is  a 


-'44 


possible  loss  of  energy,  there  is  an  indis 
putable  gain  in  mental  flexibility,  in  open 
ness  of  mind.  There  are  Philistines  in 
the  United  States,  as  there  are  in  Great 
Britain,  a  many  of  them  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic ;  but  between  the  British 
Philistine  and  the  American  there  is  an 
essential  difference.  The  British  Philis 
tine  knows  not  the  light,  and  he  hates  it 
and  he  refuses  to  receive  it.  The  Ameri 
can  Philistine  knows  not  the  light,  but  he 
is  not  hostile,  and  he  is  not  only  ready  to 
receive  it,  but  eager.  This  is  a  difference 
which  goes  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 

I  have  delayed  so  long  over  the  subject 
of  Colonel  Higginson's  book  that  I  have 
now  no  space  to  speak  of  its  style  or  of 
its  separate  chapters.  "  Weapons  of  Pre 
cision"  I  have  already  praised  ;  it  is  a  pro 
test  against  vulgarity  of  style  —  against 
the  bludgeon  and  the  boomerang  as  arms 
of  debate ;  it  is  a  series  of  swift,  rapier- 
like  thrusts,  to  be  considered  by  all  who 
think  that  our  language  is  inferior  to  the 
French  in  point  and  in  brilliancy.  In 
deed,  the  whole  book  may  be  commended 
to  those  who  can  enjoy  style  and  wit  and 
learning  and  a  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  a  wisdom  derived  from  men  as  well 


as  from  books.  Especially  may  the  es 
says  on  the  "  Shadow  of  Europe,"  on  the 
"  Perils  of  American  Humor,"  on  the 
"  Evolution  of  an  American,"  and  on  the 
"  Trick  of  Self-Depreciation  "  be  recom 
mended  to  all  who  are  downcast  about 
the  position  of  literature  and  of  the  arts 
in  these  United  States,  or  about  the  United 
States  as  a  nation.  These  essays  are 
tonic  and  stimulant ;  and  if  their  Ameri 
canism  may  seem  to  some  aggressive,  this 
is  a  failing  which  might  become  more 
common  than  it  is  without  becoming 
dangerous — if  always  it  were  character 
ized  by  knowledge  as  wide  as  Colonel 
Higginson's  and  by  wit  as  keen. 

To  no  one  may  I  venture  to  recommend 
Colonel  Higginson's  book  more  urgently 
than  to  Miss  Agnes  Repplier,  who  has 
sent  forth  a  second  volume  of  her  enter 
taining  magazine  articles  grouped  under 
the  excellent  title  of  Points  of  View. 
Miss  Repplier  is  very  clever  and  very 
colonial.  Although  a  Philadelphian,  she 
has  apparently  never  heard  of  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence.  From  the  com 
pany  she  keeps  it  is  perhaps  not  an  un 
fair  inference  to  suggest  that  she  seems 
to  be  sorry  that  she  is  not  herself  a  Poor 


Islander.  She  is  a  well-read  woman,  with 
all  literature  open  before  her,  yet  she 
quotes  almost  altogether  from  the  con 
tributors  to  the  contemporary  British 
magazines ;  and  we  feel  that  if  birds  of  a 
feather  flock  together  we  have  here  in 
the  eagle's  nest  by  some  mischance  hatch 
ed  a  British  sparrow. 

Miss  Repplier's  subjects  are  excellent 
— "A  Plea  for  Humor,"  "Books  that 
Have  Hindered  Me,"  "  Literary  Shibbo 
leths,"  "  Fiction  in  the  Pulpit,"  and  the 
like ;  and  she  discusses  them  with  ready 
humor  and  feminine  individuality.  She 
quotes  abundantly  and  often  aptly — and 
apt  quotation  is  a  difficult  art.  But  the 
writers  from  whom  she  quotes  are  not 
always  of  that  compliment.  Bagehot 
had  the  gift  of  the  winged  phrase,  and 
a  quotation  from  his  masculine  prose  is 
always  welcome.  But  a  glance  down  the 
list  of  the  others  from  whom  Miss  Rep- 
plier  quotes  will  show  that  she  mischooses 
often.  She  seems  to  lack  the  sense  of 
literary  perspective ;  and  for  her  one 
writer  is  apparently  as  good  as  another 
— so  long  as  he  is  a  contemporary  Eng 
lishman. 

There  is  no  index  to  Miss  Repplier's 


book,  but  I  have  found  amusement  in 
making  out  a  hasty  list  of  those  from 
whom  she  quotes.  I  do  not  vouch  for 
its  completeness  or  for  its  absolute  ac 
curacy,  but  it  will  serve  to  show  that  she 
is  more  at  home  in  Great  Britain  than 
in  the  United  States,  and  that  her  mind 
travels  more  willingly  in  the  little  com 
partments  of  a  British  railway  carriage 
than  in  the  large  parlor  cars  of  her  native 
land.  Besides  Bagehot  she  cites  Mr. 
Lang,  Mr.  Birrell,  Mr.  Shorthouse,  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  Mr.  Radford,  Mr. 
Swinburne,  Mr.  George  Saintsbury,  Mr. 
Gosse,  Mr.  James  Payn,  Mr.  Ruskin, 
Mr.  Pater,  Mr.  Froude,  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde, 
and  Miss  "Vernon  Lee."  There  is  also 
one  quotation  from  Doctor  Everett,  and 
one  more  from  Doctor  Holmes,  or  per 
haps  two.  But  there  is  nothing  from 
Lowell,  than  whom  a  more  quotable  writ 
er  never  lived.  In  like  manner  we  find 
Miss  Repplier  discussing  the  novels  and 
characters  of  Miss  Austen  and  of  Scott, 
of  Dickens,  of  Thackeray,  and  of  George 
Eliot,  but  never  once  referring  to  the 
novels  or  characters  of  Hawthorne.  Just 
how  it  was  possible  for  any  clever  Amer 
ican  woman  to  write  nine  essays  in  crit- 


i48 


icism,  rich  in  references  and  quotations, 
without  once  happening  on  Lowell  or  on 
Hawthorne,  is  to  me  inexplicable. 

Colonialism  is  scarcely  an  adequate  ex 
planation  for  this  devotion  to  the  first- 
rate,  second-rate,  and  third-rate  writers 
of  a  foreign  country  to  the  neglect  of  the 
first-rate  writers  of  her  own.  Perhaps 
the  secret  is  to  be  sought  rather  in  Miss 
Repplier's  lack  of  literary  standards.  In 
literature  as  in  some  other  things  a  wom 
an's  opinion  is  often  personal  and  acci 
dental  ;  it  depends  on  the  way  the  book 
has  happened  to  strike  her  ;  the  angle  of 
reflection  is  equal  to  the  angle  of  inci 
dence.  Miss  Repplier  fails  to  apprehend 
the  distinction  between  the  authors  who 
are  to  be  taken  seriously  and  the  writers 
who  are  not  to  be  taken  seriously — be 
tween  the  man  of  letters  who  is  somebody 
and  the  scribbler  who  is  merely,  in  the 
French  phrase, quelconque — nobody  in  par 
ticular.  There  is  no  need  to  go  over  the 
list  of  the  persons  from  whom  Miss  Rep 
plier  quotes,  and  with  whose  writings  she 
seems  to  have  an  equal  familiarity ;  cer 
tain  names  on  it  are  those  of  comic  per 
sonalities  not  to  be  accorded  the  compli 
ment  of  serious  criticism. 


149 


Despite  Miss  Repplier's  reliance  on 
those  British  authors  who  have  come  to 
America  to  enlighten  us  with  lectures  in 
words  of  one  syllable — to  borrow  a  neat 
phrase  of  Colonel  Higginson's — her  Points 
of  View  are  well  chosen,  and  the  outlook 
from  them  is  pleasant.  She  writes  bright 
ly  always,  and  often  brilliantly.  She  does 
herself  injustice  by  her  deference  to  those 
whom  she  invites  to  her  board,  for  she  is 
better  company  than  her  guests.  Her 
criticism  one  need  not  fully  agree  with  to 
call  it  generally  sensible  and  well  put, 
and  sometimes  necessary.  Perhaps  her 
best  pages  contain  her  protest  against 
critical  shams  and  literary  affectations. 
She  has  no  patience  with  the  man  who, 
while  really  liking  Mr.  Haggard's  tales  of 
battle,  murder,  and  sudden  death,  absurd 
ly  pretends  to  a  preference  for  Tolstoi  and 
Ibsen,  whom  his  soul  abhors.  She  has 
pleasant  humor  in  her  remark  that  those 
who  read  Robert  Elsmere  nowadays  would 
think  it  wrong  to  enjoy  Tom  Jones,  while 
the  people  who  enjoyed  Tom  Jones — when 
it  first  came  out  —  would  have  thought 
it  wrong  to  read  Robert  Elsmere;  and 
"  that  the  people  who,  wishing  to  be  on 
the  safe  side  of  virtue,  think  it  wrong  to 


'5° 


read  either,  are  scorned  greatly  as  lacking 
true  moral  discrimination." 

A  bias  in  favor  of  one's  own  country 
men  is  absurd  when  it  leads  us  to  accept 
native  geese  for  swans  of  Avon  ;  but  even 
then  it  is  more  creditable  than  a  bias  in 
favor  of  foreigners.  So  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  some  of  Miss  Repplier's  Philadel- 
phian  friends  will  take  her  to  Independ 
ence  Hall  next  Fourth  of  July  and  show 
her  the  bell  that  proclaimed  liberty 
throughout  the  land.  Then,  on  their  way 
home,  they  might  drop  into  a  book-store 
and  make  Miss  Repplier  a  present  of  Colo 
nel  Higginson's  The  New  World  and 
the  New  Book,  and  of  Mr.  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge's  Studies  in  History  (wherein  is  to 
be  found  his  acute  account  of  "  Colonial 
ism  in  America"),  and  also  of  that  volume 
of  Lowell's  prose  which  contains  the  fa 
mous  essay  "  On  a  Certain  Condescension 
in  Foreigners." 
1892 


DISSOLVING   VIEWS 
!.— OF  MARK  TWAIN'S  BEST  STORY 

i HE  boy  of  to-day  is  fortunate 
indeed,  and,  of  a  truth,  he  is 
to  be  congratulated.  While 
the  boy  of  yesterday  had  to 
stay  his  stomach  with  the  un 
conscious  humor  of  Sandford  and  Mer- 
ton,  the  boy  of  to-day  may  get  his  fill  of 
fun  and  of  romance  and  of  adventure  in 
the  Story  of  a  Bad  Boy,  in  Treasure  Isl 
and,  in  Tom  Brown,  and  in  Tom  Sawyer, 
and  then  in  the  sequel  to  Tom  Sawyer, 
wherein  Tom  himself  appears  in  the  very 
nick  of  time,  like  a  young  god  from  the 
machine.  Sequels  of  stories  which  have 
been  widely  popular  are  not  a  little  risky. 
Huckleberry  Finn  is  a  sharp  exception  to 
the  general  rule  of  failure.  Although 
it  is  a  sequel,  it  is  quite  as  worthy  of  wide 
popularity  as  Tom  Sawyer.  An  American 


critic  once  neatly  declared  that  the  late 
G.  P.  R.  James  hit  the  bull's-eye  of  suc 
cess  with  his  first  shot,  and  that  forever 
thereafter  he  went  on  firing  through  the 
same  hole.  Now  this  is  just  what  Mark 
Twain  has  not  done  :  Huckleberry  Finn  is 
not  an  attempt  to  do  Tom  Sawyer  over 
again.  It  is  a  story  quite  as  unlike  its  pre 
decessor  as  it  is  like.  Although  Huck  Finn 
appeared  first  in  the  earlier  book,  and  al 
though  Tom  Sawyer  reappears  in  the 
later,  the  scenes  and  the  characters  are 
otherwise  wholly  different.  Above  all,  the 
atmosphere  of  the  story  is  different.  Tom 
Sawyer  was  a  tale  of  boyish  adventure  in 
a  village  in  Missouri,  on  the  Mississippi 
River,  and  it  was  told  by  the  author. 
Huckleberry  Finn  is  autobiographic  ;  it  is 
a  tale  of  boyish  adventure  along  the  Mis 
sissippi  River  told  as  it  appeared  to  Huck 
Finn.  There  is  not  in  Huckleberry  Finn 
any  one  scene  quite  as  funny  as  those  in 
which  Tom  Sawyer  gets  his  friends  to 
whitewash  the  fence  for  him,  and  then 
uses  the  spoils  thereby  acquired  to  attain 
the  highest  distinction  of  the  Sunday- 
school  the  next  morning.  Nor  is  there  any 
situation  quite  as  thrilling  as  that  awful 
moment  in  the  cave  when  the  boy  and  the 


girl  are  lost  in  the  darkness  ;  and  when 
Tom  Sawyer  suddenly  sees  a  human  hand 
bearing  a  light,  and  then  finds  that  the 
hand  is  the  hand  of  Indian  Joe,  his  one 
mortal  enemy.  I  have  always  thought 
that  the  vision  of  the  hand  in  the  cave  in 
Tom  Sawyer  was  one  of  the  very  finest 
things  in  trie  literature  of  adventure  since 
Robinson  Crusoe  first  saw  a  single  foot 
print  in  the  sand  of  the  sea-shore. 

But  though  Huckleberry  Finn  may  not 
quite  reach  these  two  highest  points  of 
Tom  Sawyer,  the  general  level  of  the  later 
story  is  indisputably  higher  than  that  of 
the  earlier.  For  one  thing,  the  skill  with 
which  the  character  of  Huck  Finn  is 
maintained  is  marvellous.  We  see  every 
thing  through  his  eyes — and  they  are  his 
eyes,  and  not  a  pair  of  Mark  Twain's 
spectacles.  And  the  comments  on  what 
he  sees  are  his  comments — the  comments 
of  an  ignorant,  superstitious,  sharp,  healthy 
boy,  brought  up  as  Huck  Finn  had  been 
brought  up;  they  are  not  speeches  put 
into  his  mouth  by  the  author.  One  of 
the  most  artistic  things  in  the  book — and 
that  Mark  Twain  is  a  literary  artist  of  a 
very  high  order  all  who  have  considered 
his  later  writings  critically  cannot  but 


confess — one  of  the  most  artistic  things 
in  Huckleberry  Finn  is  the  sober  self-re 
straint  with  which  Mr.  Clemens  lets  Huck 
Finn  set  down,  without  any  comment  at 
all,  scenes  which  would  have  afforded  the 
ordinary  writer  matter  for  endless  moral 
and  political  and  sociological  disquisition. 
I  refer  particularly  to  the  accounts  of 
the  Grangerford-  Shepherdson  feud,  and 
of  the  shooting  of  Boggs  by  Colonel  Sher- 
burn.  Here  are  two  incidents  of  the  rough 
old  life  of  the  South-western  States  and 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  forty  or  fifty 
years  ago,  of  the  old  life  which  is  now 
rapidly  passing  away  under  the  influence 
of  advancing  civilization  and  increasing 
commercial  prosperity,  but  which  has  not 
wholly  disappeared  even  yet,  although  a 
slow  revolution  in  public  sentiment  is 
taking  place.  The  Grangerford  -  Shep 
herdson  feud  is  a  vendetta  as  deadly  as 
any  Corsican  could  wish,  yet  the  parties 
to  it  were  honest,  brave,  sincere,  good 
Christian  people,  probably  people  of  deep 
religious  sentiment.  None  the  less  we  see 
them  taking  their  guns  to  church,  and, 
when  occasion  serves,  joining  in  what  is 
little  better  than  a  general  massacre.  The 
killing  of  Boggs  by  Colonel  Sherburn  is 


told  with  equal  sobriety  and  truth ;  and 
the  later  scene  in  which  Colonel  Sherburn 
cows  and  lashes  the  mob  which  has  set 
out  to  lynch  him  is  one  of  the  most  vigor 
ous  bits  of  writing  Mark  Twain  has  done. 
In  Tom  Sawyer  we  saw  Huckleberry 
Finn  from  the  outside;  in  the  present 
volume  we  see  him  from  the  inside.  He 
is  almost  as  much  a  delight  to  any  one 
who  has  been  a  boy  as  was  Tom  Sawyer. 
But  only  he  or  she  who  has  been  a  boy 
can  truly  enjoy  this  record  of  his  advent 
ures  and  of  his  sentiments  and  of  his  say 
ings.  Old  maids  of  either  sex  will  wholly 
fail  to  understand  him,  or  to  like  him,  or 
to  see  his  significance  and  his  value.  Like 
Tom  Sawyer,  Huck  Finn  is  a  genuine 
boy  ;  he  is  neither  a  girl  in  boy's  clothes, 
like  many  of  the  modern  heroes  of  juve 
nile  fiction,  nor  is  he  a  "  little  man,"  a  full- 
grown  man  cut  down ;  he  is  a  boy,  just  a 
boy,  only  a  boy.  And  his  ways  and  modes 
of  thought  are  boyish.  As  Mr.  F.  Anstey 
understands  the  English  boy,  and  espe 
cially  the  English  boy  of  the  middle 
classes,  so  Mark  Twain  understands  the 
American  boy,  and  especially  the  Ameri 
can  boy  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  of  forty 
or  fifty  years  ago.  The  contrast  between 


'56 


Tom  Sawyer,  who  is  the  child  of  respect 
able  parents,  decently  brought  up,  and 
Huckleberry  Finn,  who  is  the  child  of 
the  town  drunkard,  not  brought  up  at  all, 
is  made  distinct  by  a  hundred  artistic 
touches,  not  the  least  natural  of  which  is 
Huck's  constant  reference  to  Tom  as  his 
ideal  of  what  a  boy  should  be.  When 
Huck  escapes  from  the  cabin  where  his 
drunken  and  worthless  father  had  con 
fined  him,  carefully  manufacturing  a  mass 
of  very  circumstantial  evidence  to  prove 
his  own  murder  by  robbers,  he  cannot 
help  saying,  "  I  did  wish  Tom  Sawyer  was 
there ;  I  knowed  he  would  take  an  interest 
in  this  kind  of  business,  and  throw  in  the 
fancy  touches.  Nobody  could  spread  him 
self  like  Tom  Sawyer  in  such  a  thing  as 
that."  Both  boys  have  their  full  share  of 
boyish  imagination ;  and  Tom  Sawyer, 
being  given  to  books,  lets  his  imagina 
tion  run  on  robbers  and  pirates,  having 
a  perfect  understanding  with  himself  that, 
if  you  want  to  get  fun  out  of  this  life, 
you  must  never  hesitate  to  make  believe 
very  hard  ;  and,  with  Tom's  youth  and 
health,  he  never  finds  it  hard  to  make  be 
lieve  and  to  be  a  pirate  at  will,  or  to  sum 
mon  an  attendant  spirit,  or  to  rescue  a 


157 


prisoner  from  the  deepest  dungeon  'neath 
the  castle  moat.  But  in  Huck  this  imag 
ination  has  turned  to  superstition ;  he  is 
a  walking  repository  of  the  juvenile  folk 
lore  of  the  Mississippi  Valley — a  folk-lore 
partly  traditional  among  the  white  set 
tlers,  but  largely  influenced  by  intimate 
association  with  the  negroes.  When  Huck 
was  in  his  room  at  night  all  by  himself 
waiting  for  the  signal  Tom  Sawyer  was 
to  give  him  at  midnight,  he  felt  so  lone 
some  he  wished  he  was  dead  : 

"  The  stars  was  shining  and  the  leaves 
rustled  in  the  woods  ever  so  mournful ; 
and  I  heard  an  owl,  away  off,  who-whoo- 
ing  about  somebody  that  was  dead,  and  a 
whippowill  and  a  dog  crying  about  some 
body  that  was  going  to  die ;  and  the  wind 
was  trying  to  whisper  something  to  me, 
and  I  couldn't  make  out  what  it  was,  and 
so  it  made  the  cold  shivers  run  over  me. 
Then  away  out  in  the  woods  I  heard  that 
kind  of  a  sound  that  a  ghost  makes 
when  it  wants  to  tell  about  something 
that's  on  its  mind  and  can't  make  itself 
understood,  and  so  can't  rest  easy  in  its 
grave,  and  has  to  go  about  that  way  every 
night  grieving.  I  got  so  downhearted 
and  scared  I  did  wish  I  had  some  com- 


iS8 


pany.  Pretty  soon  a  spider  went  crawling 
up  my  shoulders,  and  I  flipped  it  off  and 
it  lit  in  the  candle ;  and  before  I  could 
budge  it  was  all  shrivelled  up.  I  didn't 
need  anybody  to  tell  me  that  that  was  an 
awful  bad  sign  and  would  fetch  me  some 
bad  luck,  so  I  was  scared  and  most  shook 
the  clothes  off  me.  I  got  up  and  turned 
around  in  my  tracks  three  times  and 
crossed  my  breast  every  time  ;  and  then  I 
tied  up  a  little  lock  of  my  hair  with  a 
thread  to  keep  witches  away.  But  I  hadn't 
no  confidence.  You  do  that  when  you've 
lost  a  horseshoe  that  you've  found,  in 
stead  of  nailing  it  up  over  the  door,  but  I 
hadn't  ever  heard  anybody  say  it  was  any 
way  to  keep  off  bad  1  uck  when  you  'd  killed 
a  spider." 

And,  again,  later  in  the  story,  not  at 
night  this  time,  but  in  broad  daylight, 
Huck  walks  along  a  road  : 

"  When  I  got  there  it  was  all  still  and 
Sunday-like,  and  hot  and  sunshiny— the 
hands  was  gone  to  the  fields ;  and  there 
was  them  kind  of  faint  dronings  of  bugs 
and  flies  in  the  air  that  makes  it  seem  so 
lonesome  like  everybody's  dead  and  gone ; 
and  if  a  breeze  fans  along  and  quivers  the 
leaves,  it  makes  you  feel  mournful,  because 


you  feel  like  it's  spirits  whispering — spirits 
that's  been  dead  ever  so  many  years — and 
you  always  think  they're  talking  about  you. 
As  a  general  thing  it  makes  a  body  wish  he 
was  dead,  too,  and  done  with  it  all." 

Now,  none  of  these  sentiments  are  ap 
propriate  to  Tom  Sawyer,  who  had  none 
of  the  feeling  for  nature  which  Huck  P'inn 
had  caught  during  his  numberless  days 
and  nights  in  the  open  air.  Nor  could 
Tom  Sawyer  either  have  seen  or  set  down 
this  instantaneous  photograph  of  a  sum 
mer  storm  : 

"  It  would  get  so  dark  that  it  looked  all 
blue-black  outside,  and  lovely ;  and  the 
rain  would  thrash  along  by  so  thick  that 
the  trees  off  a  little  ways  looked  dim  and 
spider-webby ;  and  here  would  come  a 
blast  of  wind  that  would  bend  the  trees 
down  and  turn  up  the  pale  underside  of 
the  leaves ;  and  then  a  perfect  ripper  of 
a  gust  would  follow  along  and  set  the 
branches  to  tossing  their  arms  as  if  they 
was  just  wild  ;  and  next,  when  it  was  just 
about  the  bluest  and  blackest — fst !  it  was 
as  bright  as  glory,  and  you'd  have  a  little 
glimpse  of  tree -tops  a-plunging  about, 
away  off  yonder  in  the  storm,  hundreds 
of  yards  further  than  you  could  see  be- 


i6o 


fore  ;  dark  as  sin  again  in  a  second,  and 
now  you'd  hear  the  thunder  let  go  with 
an  awful  crash,  and  then  go  rumbling, 
grumbling,  tumbling  down  the  sky  tow 
ards  the  under  side  of  the  world,  like 
rolling  empty  barrels  down-stairs,  where 
it's  long  stairs  and  they  bounce  a  good 
deal,  you  know." 

The  romantic  side  of  Tom  Sawyer  is 
shown  in  most  delightfully  humorous 
fashion  in  the  account  of  his  difficult  de 
vices  to  aid  in  the  easy  escape  of  Jim,  a  run 
away  negro.  Jim  is  an  admirably  drawn 
character.  There  have  been  not  a  few 
fine  and  firm  portraits  of  negroes  in  recent 
American  fiction,  of  which  Mr.  Cable's 
Bras-Coupe  in  the  Grandissimes  is  per 
haps  the  most  vigorous,  and  Mr.  Harris's 
Mingo  and  Uncle  Remus  and  Blue  Dave 
are  the  most  gentle.  Jim  is  worthy  to 
rank  with  these ;  and  the  essential  sim 
plicity  and  kindliness  and  generosity  of 
the  Southern  negro  have  never  been  bet 
ter  shown  than  here  by  Mark  Twain.  Nor 
are  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huck  Finn  and  Jim 
the  only  fresh  and  original  figures  in 
Mr.  Clemens's  book;  on  the  contrary, 
there  is  scarcely  a  character  of  the  many 
introduced  who  does  not  impress  the 


reader  at  once  as  true  to  life — and  there 
fore  as  new,  for  life  is  so  varied  that  a 
portrait  from  life  is  sure  to  be  as  good  as 
new.  That  Mr.  Clemens  draws  from  life, 
and  yet  lifts  his  work  from  the  domain  of 
the  photograph  to  the  region  of  art,  is 
evident  to  any  one  who  will  give  his  writ 
ing  the  honest  attention  which  it  de 
serves.  The  chief  players  in  Huckleberry 
Finn  are  taken  from  life,  no  doubt,  but 
they  are  so  aptly  chosen  and  so  broadly 
drawn  that  they  are  quite  as  typical  as 
they  are  actual.  They  have  one  great 
charm,  all  of  them — they  are  not  written 
about  and  about ;  they  are  not  described 
and  dissected  and  analyzed  ;  they  appear 
and  play  their  parts  and  disappear ;  and 
yet  they  leave  a  sharp  impression  of  in 
dubitable  vitality  and  individuality. 
1886 


II.— OF  A  NOVEL  OF  M.  ZOLA'S 

IN  his  most  suggestive  study  of  the 
Greek  World  Under  Roman  Sway,  where 
in  we  find  the  feelings,  the  thoughts, 
and  the  actions  of  those  who  lived  in 


162 


the  first  century  explained  and  eluci 
dated  by  constant  references  to  simi 
lar  states  of  feeling,  thought,  and  action 
still  surviving  among  us  who  live  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  Professor  Mahaffy 
expresses  his  belief  that  the  Golden  Ass 
of  Apuleius  does  not  give  a  true  picture 
of  the  Greek  life  it  purported  to  repre 
sent,  but  that  it  is  rather  a  reflection  of 
the  depravity  of  the  Romans  to  whom  it 
was  addressed ;  and  then  he  adds  these 
shrewd  suggestions,  to  be  borne  in  mind 
by  all  who  ever  consider  the  fiction  of  a 
foreign  country  or  of  another  century: 
"  We  might  as  well  charge  all  society  in 
France  with  being  addicted  to  one  form 
of  vice,  because  recent  French  fiction  oc 
cupies  itself  almost  exclusively  with  this 
as  the  material  for  its  plots.  The  society 
for  which  such  books  are  written  must 
have  shown  that  they  are  to  its  taste  ;  the 
society  which  such  books  portray  may  be 
wholly  different  and  grossly  libelled  by 
being  made  to  reflect  the  vices  of  the  au 
thor  and  his  readers." 

If  French  society  were  composed  exclu 
sively  of  the  men  and  women  who  people 
most  of  the  Parisian  romances  of  the  past 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  ;  if  the  inhabitants 


i63 


of  the  cities  were  like  the  miserable  creat 
ures  we  see  in  M.  Zola's  Pot-Bouille,  and 
if  the  dwellers  in  the  fields  were  like  the 
horrible  wretches  we  see  in  M.  Zola's  La 
Terre,  the  outlook  of  France  would  be 
black  indeed,  for  no  country  could  exist 
or  should  exist  which  was  peopled  by  such 
a  gang  of  monsters.  But  any  one  who 
knows  French  life,  any  one  especially 
who  knows  the  life  of  the  larger  provincial 
towns,  knows  that  what  M.  Zola  has  repre 
sented  as  typical  and  characteristic  is,  in 
reality,  exceptional  and  abnormal.  Prob 
ably  there  is  no  house  in  the  whole  of 
Paris  occupied  by  as  corrupt  a  set  of  ten 
ants  as  those  set  before  us  in  Pot-Bouille  ; 
and  certainly  there  is  no  village  in  the 
whole  of  France  wherein  all  the  horrors 
depicted  in  La  Terre  could  possibly  have 
taken  place.  The  fact  is,  the  French  like 
to  boast  about  vice  as  the  British  like 
to  boast  about  virtue.  I  should  doubt  if 
there  was  any  great  difference  in  morals 
between  the  upper  society  of  Paris  and  of 
London,  except  the  overwhelming  hypoc 
risy  of  the  latter.  Apparently  M.  Zola 
has  at  last  awakened  to  some  conscious 
ness  of  the  false  impression  produced  by 
his  work.  Le  Reve  was  his  attempt  to 


1 64 


produce  a  novel  fit  for  the  class  to  which 
nearly  all  English  novels  are  addressed. 

In  his  recent  study,  L' Argent,  there  is 
a  fairer  balance  than  in  his  other  books ; 
there  are  decent  people,  kindly  folk,  men 
and  women  of  honest  hearts  and  willing 
hands.  We  have  a  cheerful  glimpse  of 
the  home  life  of  Mazaud,  the  stock-broker 
who  commits  suicide  when  he  fails.  The 
Jordans,  husband  and  wife,  are  perhaps 
the  pleasantest  pair  to  be  found  in  all  M. 
Zola's  novels.  With  the  novelist's  in 
creasing  fame,  apparently,  he  is  taking 
brighter  views  of  humanity.  And  Ma 
dame  Caroline,  despite  her  lapse,  might 
almost  be  called  an  honest  woman,  if  this 
is  not  a  paradox ;  she  is  a  strong,  whole 
some,  broad-minded  creature,  admirably 
realized.  The  goddess  Lubricity,  whom 
Matthew  Arnold  first  named  as  the  pre 
siding  deity  of  French  fiction,  is  still  wor 
shipped  in  other  parts  of  the  book ;  and 
her  worship  is  out  of  place  in  this  book  at 
least,  for  those  who  are  seized  with  the 
lust  for  gain  have  little  time  for  any  other. 
For  example,  the  whole  story  of  Saccard's 
relations  with  the  Baroness  Sandorff  is 
needlessly  offensive  and  revolting  ;  and  at 
bottom  it  is  essentially  false.  But  there 


i65 


is  a  marked  improvement  of  tone  in  L Ar 
gent  over  certain  even  of  his  later  books, 
while  the  atmosphere  is  nowhere  as  foul 
as  it  was  in  most  of  his  earlier  novels. 

There  is  no  disputing  that  M.  Zola  is 
a  man  with  a  dirty  mind— with  a  liking 
for  dirt  for  its  own  sake.  There  is  no 
disputing  also  that  he  is  a  novelist  of 
most  extraordinary  fecundity  and  force. 
Of  all  the  books  I  have  read  in  the  past 
ten  years,  I  received  the  strongest  impres 
sion  from  Zola's  Germinal  and  from  Ib 
sen's  Ghosts  ;  and  I  can  still  hear  the  cry 
for  light,  and  the  pitiful  appeal  of  the  son 
to  the  mother  with  which  the  latter 
closes ;  and  I  can  still  feel  the  chill  wind 
which  whistles  across  the  dark  plain  in 
the  opening  pages  of  the  former.  There 
is  in  L' Argent  the  same  power,  the  same 
splendid  sweep,  the  same  mighty  move 
ment,  the  same  symbolic  treatment  of  the 
subject,  the  same  epic  method.  M.  Zola 
thinks  himself  a  naturalist ;  he  has  preach 
ed  naturalism  from  the  house-top ;  he 
is  generally  taken  at  his  word  and  crit 
icised  as  a  naturalist,  and  as  a  fact  he  is 
not  a  naturalist  at  all.  M.  Zola  is  not  one 
who  sees  certain  things  in  life,  and  who 
ties  them  together  with  a  loose  thread  of 


i66 


plot — although  this  is  the  naturalism  he 
approves  of.  He  has  preached  it,  but  he 
has  never  practised  it.  On  the  contrary, 
M.  Zola  picks  out  a  subject  and  reads  up 
and  crams  for  it,  and  conceives  it  as  a 
whole,  and  devises  typical  characters  and 
characteristic  incidents,  and  co-ordinates 
the  materials  he  has  thus  laboriously  ac 
cumulated  into  a  harmonious  work  of  art, 
as  closely  constructed  as  a  Greek  tragedy 
and  moving  forward  towards  the  inevi 
table  catastrophe  with  something  of  the 
same  irresistible  impulse.  No  novelist  of 
our  time  is  affected  less  by  what  he  sees 
in  nature  than  M.  Zola ;  not  one  is  more 
consciously  artful. 

This  symbolic  method  of  M.  Zola's  is 
shown  in  L Argent  almost  as  clearly  as  in 
Germinal,  which  I  cannot  help  consider 
ing  his  greatest  novel,  despite  its  prolixity 
and  the  foulness  of  many  of  its  episodes. 
As  Germinal  was  the  story  of  a  coal-mine 
with  a  strike,  so  L' Argent  is  a  story  of  a 
gigantic  speculation  on  the  stock  ex 
change,  treated  in  the  same  epic  fashion, 
with  typical  characters  and  all  the  neces 
sary  incidents.  Obviously  the  Union  Ge- 
nerale  suggested  certain  particular  details 
of  Saccard's  Banque  Universelle.  Obvi- 


i67 


ously  also  Baron  Rothschild  sat  for  the 
portrait  of  Gundermann.  There  is  the 
same  use  of  minor  figures  to  personify  the 
crowd,  and  themselves  identifiable  by 
some  broad  characteristic  —  Moser,  the 
bear;  Pellerault,  the  bull;  Amadrin,  the 
speculator  who  foolishly  blundered  into  a 
successful  operation,  and  who  has  wisely 
held  his  tongue  ever  since ;  and  all  these 
minor  characters  (and  there  is  a  host  of 
them)  serve  as  a  chorus,  help  along  the 
main  action  of  the  tale,  comment  upon  it, 
and  typify  the  throng  of  men  and  women 
who  are  at  the  periphery  of  any  great 
movement.  These  little  people  are  all 
vigorously  projected  ;  they  are  all  adroitly 
contrasted  one  with  another ;  they  are  all 
carried  in  the  hand  of  the  novelist  and 
manoeuvred  with  unfailing  effect,  with  a 
power  and  a  certainty  which  no  other  liv 
ing  novelist  possesses. 

That  many  readers  should  be  bored  by 
all  of  Zola's  writing  I  can  readily  under 
stand,  for  it  is  not  always  easy  reading. 
That  many  more  should  be  shocked  by 
him  is  even  more  comprehensible,  for  he 
has  a  thick  thumb  and  he  makes  dirty 
marks  over  all  his  work.  That  some 
even  should  be  annoyed  by  M.  Zola's 


1 68 


method  or  irritated  by  his  mannerisms,  I 
can  explain  without  difficulty.  But  what 
I  cannot  comprehend  is  that  any  one 
having  read  Une  Page  d"  Amour  or  Ger 
minal  or  U  Argent  can  deny  that  M.  Zola 
is  a  very  great  force  in  fiction.  But  there 
are  critics  in  Great  Britain — and  even  in 
the  United  States,  where  we  are  less 
squeamish  and  less  hypocritical — who  re 
fuse  to  reckon  with  M.  Zola,  and  who  pass 
by  on  the  other  side.  A  man  must  be 
strong  of  stomach  to  enjoy  much  of  M. 
Zola's  fiction ;  he  must  be  feeble  in  per 
ception  if  he  does  not  feel  its  strength 
and  its  complex  art.  M.  Zola's  strength 
is  often  rank,  no  doubt,  and  there  is  a  foul 
flavor  about  even  his  most  forcible  novels, 
which  makes  them  unfit  for  the  library 
of  the  clean -minded  American  woman. 
But  in  any  exact  sense  of  the  word  M. 
Zola's  novels  are  not  immoral,  as  the 
romances  of  M.  Georges  Ohnet  are  im 
moral,  for  example,  or  those  of  the  late 
Octave  Feuillet.  Yet  they  are  not  spoon- 
meat  for  babes. 
1891 


1 69 


III.— OF  WOMEN'S   NOVELS 

THE  reader  of  Humphrey  Clinker  —  if 
that  robust  and  sturdy  British  story  has 
any  readers  nowadays,  when  the  art  of 
fiction  has  become  so  much  finer  and 
more  subtile  —  will  remember  that  little 
Tim  Cropdale  "  had  made  shift  to  live 
many  years  by  writing  novels  at  the  rate 
of  ^5  a  volume  ;  but  that  branch  of  busi 
ness  is  now  engrossed  by  female  authors," 
so  Smollett  goes  on  to  tell  us,  "  who  pub 
lish  merely  for  the  propagation  of  virtue, 
with  so  much  ease  and  spirit  and  deli 
cacy  and  knowledge  of  the  human  heart, 
and  all  in  the  serene  tranquillity  of  high 
life,  that  the  reader  is  not  only  enchanted 
by  their  genius  but  reformed  by  their 
mdrality."  Humphrey  Clinker  was  first 
published  in  1771,  the  year  of  its  author's 
death ;  and  the  names  of  the  women  of 
England  who  were  writing  novels  six- 
score  years  ago  are  now  forgotten.  How 
many  of  the  insatiate  devourers  of  fiction 
who  feed  voraciously  on  the  paper-cover 
ed  volumes  of  the  news-stand  have  ever 
heard  of  the  Memoirs  of  Miss  Sidney  Bid- 


1 7o 


duJpk  for  example?  Yet  Charles  James 
Fox  called  this  the  best  novel  of  his  age ; 
and  Doctor  Johnson  found  great  interest 
in  following  the  misadventures  of  Miss 
Biddulph,  and  declared  to  the  authoress 
that  he  knew  not  if  she  had  a  right,  on 
moral  principles,  to  make  her  readers  suf 
fer  so  much.  The  authoress  of  the  Me 
moirs  of  Miss  Sidney  Biddulph  was  Fran 
ces  Sheridan,  now  remembered  only  be 
cause  she  was  the  mother  of  the  author 
of  the  School  for  Scandal. 

Mrs.  Sheridan  was  an  estimable  woman, 
and  it  was  not  to  her  that  Smollett  turned 
the  edge  of  his  irony.  There  were  in  his 
day  not  a  few  fashionable  ladies  who,  in 
"  the  serene  tranquillity  of  high  life,"  told 
stories  that  neither  enchanted  by  their 
genius  nor  reformed  by  their  morality. 
In  most  of  the  novels  written  by  women 
in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  the  morality  is  but  little  more  ob 
vious  than  the  genius.  Like  the  fashion 
able  English  novels  of  the  first  half  of  this 
century,  now  as  carefully  forgotten  as  the 
tales  of  Smollett's  fair  contemporaries, 
the  female  fiction  with  which  Little  Tim 
Cropdale  found  himself  unable  to  com 
pete  was  a  curious  compound  of  bad 


morals,  bad  manners,  and  bad  grammar. 
Although  stories  by  female  authors  who 
"publish  merely  for  the  propagation  of 
virtue  "  and  for  the  gratification  of  their 
own  vanity  are  still  to  be  found  in  Lon 
don  by  anyone  who  will  seek  on  Mr.  Mu- 
die's  shelves,  the  standard  of  female  fic 
tion  has  been  greatly  elevated  in  England 
since  Miss  Austen  put  forth  her  first  mod 
est  story. 

Charlotte  Bronte  and  George  Eliot  fol 
lowed  in  due  season ;  and  it  would  not 
now  be  possible  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the 
ten  greatest  British  novelists  without 
placing  on  it  the  names  of  two  or  three 
women,  at  the  least.  There  are  diligent 
readers  of  fiction  who  would  insist  that  the 
name  of  Mrs.  Oliphant  should  be  inscribed 
among  the  chosen  few,  by  reason  of  cer 
tain  of  her  earlier  tales  of  Scottish  life ; 
and  there  are  others  equally  insistent  that 
the  strange  romances  of  the  English  lady 
who  calls  herself  a  French  expletive  en 
title  the  name  of  "  Ouida  "  to  be  placed  on 
the  roll  of  the  chosen  few.  Indeed,  the 
admiration  of  those  who  do  admire  this 
lady's  stories  is  so  ardent  and  fervid  that 
I  sometimes  wonder  whether  the  twen 
tieth  century  will  not  see  a  Ouida  Society 


for  the  expounding  of  the  inner  spiritual 
meaning  of  Under  Two  Flags  and  Held 
in  Bondage, 

In  America,  since  the  day  when  Susan 
na  Rowson  wrote  Charlotte  Temple,  and 
more  especially  since  the  day  when  Mrs. 
Stowe  wrote  Uncle  Touts  Cabin,  no  list 
of  American  novelists  could  fairly  be 
drawn  up  on  which  nearly  half  the  names 
would  not  be  those  of  women — even  when 
one  of  these  names  might  seem  to  be 
that  of  a  man — like  Charles  Egbert  Crad- 
dock's,  for  example.  Colonel  Higginson 
recently  deplored  the  oblivion  into  which 
we  have  allowed  the  wholesomely  realistic 
fiction  of  Miss  Sedgwick  to  fall;  and  it 
has  been  remarked  that  the  vigorous  New 
England  tales  of  Rose  Terry  Cooke  never 
met  with  the  full  measure  of  success  they 
deserved.  But  the  authoress  of  Ramona, 
the  authoress  of  That  Lass  o  Loivries, 
the  authoress  of  Anne,  the  authoress  of 
Faith  Gartneys  Girlhood,  the  authoress 
of  Signor  Monaldini's  Niece,  the  author 
ess  of  John  Ward,  Preacher,  the  authoress 
of  the  Story  of  Margaret  Kent,  the  au 
thoress  of  Friend  Olivia,  and  the  author 
esses  of  a  dozen  or  of  a  score  of  other 
novels  which  have  had^their  day  of  vogue, 


173 


these  ladies  are  able  easily  to  prove  that 
the  field  of  fiction  is  being  cultivated  dili 
gently  by  the  women  of  America. 

One  of  the  cleverest  novels  recently 
published  by  any  American  woman  is 
The  Anglomanzacs,  which  came  forth 
anonymously,  but  which  Mrs.  Burton  Har 
rison  has  since  acknowledged.  It  is  a 
sketch  only,  a  little  picture  of  a  corner  of 
life,  hardly  more  than  an  impression,  but 
is  brilliant  in  color  and  accurate  in  draw 
ing.  Limited  as  it  is  in  scope  and  con 
tracted  as  is  its  framework,  it  strikes  me 
as  the  best  reflection  of  certain  phases  of 
New  York  life  since  the  author  of  the 
Potiphar  Papers  made  fun  of  the  Rever 
end  Mr.  Creamcheese.  It  echoes  the  talk 
of  those  who 

"  tread  the  weary  mill 
With  jaded  step  and  call  it  pleasure  still." 

And,  better  yet,  it  suggests  the  feelings 
which  prompted  the  talk.  At  a  recent 
meeting  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  Club, 
Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt  called  Mr.  Ward 
McAllister's  Society  as  I  Found  It  an 
"exposure  of  the  400;"  and  certainly  it 
is  difficult  to  believe  that  even  100  people 
of  fashion  could  be  found  anywhere  in 


'74 


New  York  as  dull  as  those  Mr.  McAllis 
ter  saw  around  him,  as  narrow-minded 
and  as  thick-witted.  Mrs.  Burton  Har 
rison  knows  what  is  called  Society  quite 
as  well  as  Mr.  McAllister;  and  as  she  is 
a  clever  woman,  those  she  sees  about  her 
are  often  clever  also.  The  company  of 
Anglomaniacs  to  which  she  invites  our 
attention  are  not  dullards,  nor  are  they 
cads,  even  though  an  ill-natured  philoso 
pher  might  be  moved  to  call  them  snobs. 
A  good-natured  philosopher  would  prob 
ably  find  them  amusing;  and  he  would 
make  shift  to  enjoy  their  companionship, 
dropping  easily  into  acquaintance  and 
laughing  with  them  quite  as  often  as  he 
laughed  at  them. 

In  these  days,  when  hosts  of  honest 
people  throughout  the  United  States  are 
reading  with  delighted  awe  long  accounts 
of  the  manners  and  customs  of  a  strange 
tribe  of  human  creatures,  the  female  of 
which  is  known  as  a  "  Society  Lady  "  and 
the  male  as  a  "Clubman,"  it  is  pleasant 
to  find  novels  of  New  York  life  written 
by  ladies  who  move  within  the  charmed 
circle  of  what  is  called  Society,  and  who 
can  write  about  the  doings  of  their  fel 
lows  simply  and  without  either  snobbish 


wonder  or  caddish  envy.  The  authoress 
of  The  Anglomaniacs  and  the  authoress 
of  Mademoiselle  Reseda  see  Society  as  it 
is,  and  they  are  not  so  dazzled  by  the  un 
expected  glare  that  they  need  to  put  on 
sea -side  spectacles  to  enable  them  to 
observe  what  is  going  on  about  them.  It 
is  an  old  saying  that  to  describe  well  we 
must  not  know  too  well,  for  long  knowl 
edge  blunts  the  edge  of  appreciation. 
But  those  who,  having  knowledge,  seek 
rather  to  reveal  than  to  describe,  often 
render  a  more  valuable  service  than  the 
more  superficial  observers  who  offer  us 
their  first  impressions.  Something  of 
this  revelation  of  Society  we  find  in  Mrs. 
Harrison's  brilliant  sketch  and  in  the 
stories  of  "  Julien  Gordon." 

Thackeray  complained  that  no  British 
novelist  had  dared  to  describe  a  young 
man's  life  since  Fielding  wrote  Tom  Jones; 
and  Mr.  Henry  James,  praising  George 
Sand,  notes  the  total  absence  of  passion 
in  English  novels.  If  this  reproach  is 
ever  taken  away  from  our  fiction,  it  will 
be  by  some  woman.  Women  are  more 
willing  than  men  to  suggest  the  animal 
nature  that  sheathes  our  immortal  souls; 
they  are  bolder  in  the  use  of  the  stronger 


176 


emotions;  they  are  more  willing  to  sug 
gest  the  possibilities  of  passion  lurking 
all  unsuspected  beneath  the  placidity  of 
modern  fine-lady  existence.  Perhaps  they 
are  sometimes  even  a  little  too  willing: 
as  Mr.  Warner  reminded  us  not  long  ago, 
"  it  may  be  generally  said  of  novelists,  that 
men  know  more  than  they  tell,  and  that 
women  tell  more  than  they  know." 

It  is  by  slow  degrees  that  woman  forges 
forward  and  takes  her  place  alongside 
man  in  the  mastery  of  the  fine  arts.  The 
Muses  were  all  women,  once  upon  a  time, 
but  those  whom  they  visited  were  all  men. 
The  first  art  in  which  the  woman  made 
herself  manifestly  the  equal  of  the  man 
was  the  art  of  vocal  music — or  was  it  that 
of  dancing?  The  daughter  of  Herodias 
was  mistress  of  both  accomplishments. 
Then  in  time  woman  divided  the  stage 
with  man  ;  the  histrionic  art  was  possess 
ed  by  both  sexes  with  equal  opportunity  ; 
and  who  shall  say  that  Garrick  or  Kean 
surpassed  in  power  Mrs.  Siddons  or 
Rachel  ?  Now  prose  fiction  is  theirs 
quite  as  much  as  it  is  man's ;  and  when 
the  Critic  recently  elected  by  vote  the 
twenty  foremost  American  women  of  let 
ters,  many  more  than  half  were  writers  of 


novels.  The  readers  of  Humphrey  Clink 
er  did  not  foresee  Jane  Austen  and  George 
Eliot  and  George  Sand  any  more  than  lit 
tle  Tim  Cropdale  could. 

1891 


IV.— OF   TWO   LATTERDAY    HUMORISTS 

"  WHOEVER  and  wherever  and  however 
situated  a  man  is,  he  must  watch  three 
things — sleeping,  digestion, and  laughing," 
said  Mr.  Beecher;  and  he  added  with 
equal  wisdom,  "they  are  three  indis 
pensable  necessities.  Prayers  are  very 
well,  and  reading  the  Bible  very  well  in 
deed  ;  but  a  man  can  get  along  without 
the  Bible,  but  he  can't  without  the  other 
three  things."  When  a  man  has  a  clear 
conscience,  good  digestion  ought  to  wait 
on  appetite ;  and  when  he  has  a  good 
digestion  and  a  clear  conscience,  he  ought 
to  find  it  easy  to  sleep  well.  Yet  as  sleep 
is  the  only  true  friend  that  will  not  come 
at  one's  call,  he  may  be  wakeful  despite 
his  pure  heart  and  quiet  stomach;  and  in 
this  case  he  may  fairly  resort  to  the  Pat 
ent-office  reports  or  the  British  comic 
papers,  than  which 


i78 

"  Not  poppy,  nor  mandragora, 
Nor  all  the  drowsy  syrups  of  the  world  " 

are  more  potent  soporifics.  Many  of  the 
avowedly  humorous  publications  of  the 
day  are  better  as  a  cure  for  sleeplessness 
than  as  a  cause  of  laughter.  Of  all  sad 
words  of  tongue  or  pen  none  is  sadder 
than  what  is  known  in  many  a  newspaper 
office  as  "comic  copy."  Wit  cannot  be 
made  to  order,  and  humor  cannot  be  pur 
chased  by  the  yard,  with  a  discount  if  the 
buyer  takes  the  whole  roll. 

In  the  History  of  Henry  Esmond— 
more  veracious  than  many  a  more  pre 
tentious  history  of  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne  and  of  a  broader  truth— Thackeray 
speaks  of  the  "  famous  beaux-esprits," 
who  "  would  make  many  brilliant  hits- 
half  a  dozen  in  a  night  sometimes — but, 
like  sharp-shooters,  when  they  had  fired 
their  shot,  they  were  obliged  to  retire  un 
der  cover  till  their  pieces  were  loaded 
again  and  they  got  another  chance  at 
their  enemy."  And  this  figure  expresses 
the  exact  fact;  no  wit  is  a  breech-loader- 
still  less  is  he  a  repeating  rifle  capable  of 
discharging  sixteen  shots  without  taking 
thought.  The  readiest  man  must  have 
time  to  reload  and  the  most  fertile  must 


I79 


lie  fallow  now  and  again.  Richard  Brins- 
ley  Sheridan,  even  when  he  had  most 
carefully  prepared  himself,  did  not  spar 
kle  in  private  conversation  as  he  was  able 
to  make  his  characters  scintillate  through 
the  long  sittings  of  the  scandalous  col 
lege.  If  needs  must  and  the  devil  drives 
a  poor  wretch  to  crack  jokes  unceasingly, 
then  of  necessity  the  edge  of  his  wit  will 
not  be  as  keen  nor  the  strokes  of  his 
humor  as  effective.  And  this  is  why  the 
conducting  of  a  comic  paper  is  like  the 
leading  of  a  forlorn  hope.  Success  can 
scarcely  be  more  than  a  lucky  accident. 
"Tis  not  in  mortals  to  command  suc 
cess,"  and  if  Cato  and  Sempronius  were 
joint  editors  of  a  comic  weekly  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  they  would  even  de 
serve  it.  Nor  would  the  author  of  the 
tragedy  from  which  this  last  quotation  is 
taken  have  been  a  satisfactory  office  edi 
tor  of  a  comic  weekly,  although  he  con 
tributed  to  the  Spectator  the  delightfully 
and  delicately  humorous  sketch  of  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley. 

This  is  why  the  level  of  comic  journal 
ism  is  not  as  lofty  as  we  could  wish.  This 
is  why  we  frequently  find  poor  jokes  even 
in  journals  where  every  effort  is  made  to 


i8o 


provide  good  jokes.  The  supply  is  not 
equal  to  the  demand,  and  the  jokesmith 
often  has  to  set  his  wits  to  work  when 
the  stock  of  raw  material  is  running  low. 
Punch  and  Puck  are  the  representative 
comic  weeklies  of  the  two  great  branches 
of  the  English-speaking  race.  Punch  has 
had  a  great  past.  It  may  even  be  ques 
tioned  whether  those  who  declare  its  de 
cadence  do  not  exaggerate  its  former 
merits  almost  as  much  as  they  do  its 
present  failings.  It  is  vaguely  remem 
bered  that  in  Punch  Hood  published  the 
"  Song  of  the  Shirt "  and  Thackeray  the 
Book  of  Snobs,  and  Douglas  Jerrold  the 
Story  of  a  Feather,  and  it  is  often  sup 
posed  that  there  was  a  time  when  all 
the  clever  men  of  London  contributed 
their  best  things  every  week  to  Punch. 
But  one  has  only  to  turn  over  the  leaves 
of  any  of  the  earlier  volumes  of  the  Brit 
ish  weekly  to  discover  that  if  this  ever 
were  the  case,  then  the  clever  men  of 
London  were  a  very  dull  lot.  Punch  is 
very  much  the  same  now  that  it  was  in 
the  past.  Hood  contributed  the  "  Song 
of  the  Shirt,"  and  nothing  else ;  Douglas 
Jerrold  wrote  the  Story  of  a  Feather — 
but  who  reads  Douglas  Jerrold  nowa- 


days?  A'Becket  composed  a  Comic  His 
tory  of  England,  and  the  few  of  us  who 
have  read  it  to-day  feel  as  Dickens  felt  at 
the  time,  that  it  is  dull  and  machine- 
made.  Thackeray  wrote  Mr.  Punch's 
Prize  Novelists  and  the  Snob  Papers; 
and  Thackeray  was  the  "  Fat  Contrib 
utor;"  and  there  has  been  no  one  like 
Thackeray  since  he  left  the  paper. 

But  the  pictures  of  Punch  are  as  good 
now  as  ever  they  were;  perhaps,  taking 
one  week  with  another,  they  are  better. 
And  the  letter-press  is  very  much  what 
it  has  always  been — rhymes,  jingles,  puns 
in  profusion,  topical  allusions — "comic 
copy,"  in  short.  Now  and  then  there  is 
something  in  Punch  which  is  still  worth 
reading.  There  were  Artemus  Ward's 
papers  a  score  of  years  ago,  for  instance, 
and  there  were  more  recently  some  of 
Mr.  F.  C.  Burnand's  earlier  parodies  and 
some  of  his  earlier  Happy  Thoughts. 
Decidedly  the  most  amusing  prose  which 
has  appeared  in  Punch  during  the  past 
four  or  five  years  is  the  series  of  over 
heard  conversations  called  Voces  Populi. 

The  author  of  Voces  Populi  is  the  "  F. 
Anstey  "  who  is  well  known  in  America 
as  the  writer  of  Vice  Versa  and  of  the 


182 


Tinted  Venus.     It  is  an  open  secret  that 

the  real  name  of  "  F.  Anstey"  is  Guthrie, 

just  as  everybody  knows  that  the    real 

name  of  "  Mark  Twain  "  is  Clemens.    (The 

conjunction  of  these  names  was  fortuitous, 

but  it  serves  to  remind  me  that  I  once 

heard  Mr.   Robert  Louis  Stevenson  say 

that  the  two  strongest  chapters  in  the 

fiction  of  the  past  ten  years  were  to  be 

found,  one  in  the   Giant's  Robe  of  "  F. 

Anstey  "  and  the  other  in  the  Huckleberry 

Finn  of  "  Mark  Twain.")    The  first  book 

of  an  unknown  author  has  small  chance 

of  sudden  success,  and  Vice  Versa  was  Mr, 

Guthrie's  first  book.     Fortunately  it  came 

into  the  hands  of   Mr.   Andrew  Lang  a 

few  days  after  it  was  published,  and  Mr. 

Lang  was  so  taken  with  its  freshness,  its 

truthfulness  to  boy  nature,  and  its  almost 

pathetic  humor  that  he  wrote  a  column 

about   it    in  the  Daily  News — a    column 

of  the   heartiest  appreciation.     "It  was 

Lang's  review  that  made  the  success  of 

Vice    Versa,"   said    Mr.    Guthrie    to    me 

once  in  London,  two  or  three  years  ago, 

when  we  were  planning  to  write  a  story 

together.     And    it   was    Mr.    Lang   who 

afterwards  introduced  the  author  of  Vice 

Versa  to  the  staff  of  Punch. 


i83 


In  Voces  Popult  Mr.  Guthne  has  gath 
ered  a  score  and  a  half  of  fragmentary 
dialogues,  casual,  plotless,  but  never  point 
less.  They  are  thumbnail  sketches  of 
British  character,  "At  a  Dinner  Party," 
"  At  a  Wedding,"  "  At  the  French  Play," 
"  At  a  Turkish  Bath,"  "  In  an  Italian 
Restaurant,"  in  "  Trafalgar  Square"  dur 
ing  a  demonstration,  and  in  "  A  Show 
Place."  They  are  photographic  in  their 
accuracy,  making  due  allowance  for 
humorous  foreshortening.  They  hit  off 
the  foibles  of  fashionable  frivolity ;  they 
depict  with  unfaltering  exactness  the  in 
conceivable  limitations  and  narrowness 
of  the  middle  class;  but  where  they  are 
most  abundantly  and  triumphantly  suc 
cessful  is  in  the  rendering  of  the  lower 
orders  of  London.  Mr.  Guthrie  has 
caught  the  cockney  in  the  very  act  of 
cockneyism,  and  he  has  here  pilloried  him 
for  all  time,  but  wholly  without  bitterness 
or  rancor.  Mr.  Guthrie  knows  his  roughs* 
his  ruffians,  his  house-maids,  his  trav 
ellers,  "  Third  Class — Parliamentary,"  and 
his  visitors  to  "An  East-End  Poultry 
Show;"  he  knows  them  through  and 
through ;  he  sees  their  weakness ;  and 
after  all  he  is  tolerant,  he  does  not  dislike 


1 84 


them  in  his  heart,  he  handles  them  as 
though  he  loved  them.  We  confess  his 
kindliness  of  touch,  even  though  it  moves 
us  to  no  more  friendly  feeling  of  our  own. 
"  Vox  populi,  vox  Dei,"  says  the  adage,  as 
true  as  most  adages ;  but  these  Voces 
Populi,  if  not  "  Voces  diaboli,"  might  at 
least  be  called  to  the  witness-box  by  the 
devil's  advocate.  It  is  a  terrible  indict 
ment  of  contemporary  British  manners 
that  we  hear  in  these  conversations,  hu 
morous  as  they  are ;  and  the  indictment 
is  perhaps  the  severer  in  that  it  is  wholly 
unconscious.  It  is  quite  unwittingly  that 
Mr.  Guthrie  offers  this  evidence  to  prove 
the  truth  of  Matthew  Arnold's  assertion 
that  one  could  see  in  England  "an  aris 
tocracy  materialized  and  null,  a  middle 
class  purblind  and  hideous,  a  lower  class 
crude  and  brutal." 

In  this  respect  at  least  no  greater  con 
trast  could  be  found  to  the  Voces  Populi 
of  Mr.  Guthrie,  reprinted  from  the  British 
Punch,  than  the  Short  Sixes  of  Mr.  H. 
C.  Bunner,  reprinted  from  the  American 
Puck.  The  impression  with  which  one 
rises  from  the  reading  of  Mr.  Bunner's 
tales  is  as  different  as  possible  from  that 
with  which  one  rises  from  the  reading 


i8S 


of  Mr.  Guthrie's  dialogues.  In  the  one 
book  we  see  the  British  selfish,  brutal, 
narrow-minded;  and  in  the  other  we 
see  the  Americans  lively,  kindly,  good- 
humored.  In  each  case  the  volume  is 
made  up  of  matter  contributed  week  by 
week  to  a  comic  journal.  If  it  be  ob 
jected  that  the  satirist  is  bound  perforce 
to  show  the  seamy  side  of  human  nature, 
the  obligation  ought  to  be  equally  re 
spected  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic; 
and  the  fact  is  that  Mr.  Guthrie  reports 
conversations  which  are  very  clever  and 
very  amusing,  but  which  give  us  no  lik 
ing  for  his  fellow-countrymen ;  whereas 
Mr.  Bunner's  men  and  women  we  are 
ready  and  glad  to  take  by  the  hand,  even 
if  we  do  not  take  them  all  to  our  hearts. 
Look  down  the  dramatis  persona;  of  Mr. 
Bunner's  thirteen  stories,  and  even  the 
old  curmudgeon  who  befools  the  little 
parson  of  one  of  "  The  Two  Churches  of 
Quawket  "  has  humor  enough  to  save  him 
from  hatred,  and  the  little  parson  himself 
is  pitiful  rather  than  contemptible.  Nei 
ther  Colonel  Brereton's  Aunty  nor  the 
mendacious  and  persuasive  colonel  is  a 
character  whom  any  American  would 
cross  the  street  to  avoid— far  from  it. 


1 86 


And  as  for  the  pert  young  person  who  en 
gages  in  "  A  Sisterly  Scheme,"  and  who 
is  perhaps  the  most  forward  and  objec 
tionable  young  woman  of  recent  fiction, 
where  is  the  American  who  could  object 
to  her?  Where,  indeed,  is  the  American 
who  does  not  envy  Muffets  the  fun  of  his 
courtship  and  the  joy  of  his  marriage? 

George  Eliot  in  one  of  her  novels  tells 
us  that  "a  difference  of  taste  in  jests  is  a 
great  strain  on  the  affections " — a  pro 
found  truth.  There  is  little  hope  of  hap 
piness  in  a  union  where  one  party  has  a 
highly  developed  sense  of  humor  and  the 
other  none  at  all.  That  is  perhaps  the 
reason  why  so  few  international  marriages 
are  happy.  Certainly,  the  chief  character 
istic  of  the  figures  in  Mr.  Guthrie's  little 
dramas  is  their  absence  of  humor,  and  one 
of  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  people 
in  Mr.  Bunner's  prose  comedies  is  their 
abundance  of  humor.  We  laugh  at  the 
speakers  in  Voces  Populi,  while  we  laugh 
with  the  actors  in  Short  Sixes.  And 
we  find  in  Mr.  Bunner's  book  an  un 
failing  variety,  an  unflagging  ingenuity 
and  an  unforced  humor,  now  rich  and 
now  delicate.  We  are  delighted  by  wit, 
playful  and  incessant  and  never  obtrusive. 


i87 


We  discover  ourselves  to  be  dissolved  in 
laughter,  and  often  it  is  "  the  exquisite 
laughter  that  comes  from  a  gratification 
of  the  reasoning  faculty,"  as  George  Eliot 
called  it  in  one  of  her  letters.  Never  is  it 
laughter  that  we  ever  feel  ashamed  of ; 
near  the  smile  there  is  often  a  tear,  hid 
den,  and  to  be  found  only  by  those  who 
seek.  "  The  Tenor,"  for  example,  which 
may  seem  to  some  hasty  readers  almost 
farcical,  is  in  reality  almost  tragic,  in  that 
the  heroine  sees  the  shattering  of  an  ideal 
and  stumbles  over  the  clay  feet  of  her  idol. 
The  "  Love  Letters  of  Smith  "  are  broadly 
funny,  if  you  choose  to  think  them  so,  but 
I  feel  sorry  for  the  reader  who  pays  that 
clever  sketch  the  tribute  of  careless  laugh 
ter  only. 

Next,  perhaps,  to  Mr.  Bunner's  firm 
grasp  of  character,  to  his  delicate  per 
ception,  to  his  keen  observation,  to  his 
faculty  of  hinting  a  pathetic  undercurrent 
beneath  the  flow  of  humor,  comes  his 
felicity  in  suggesting  the  very  essence  of 
New  York.  Only  three  of  the  thirteen 
little  tales  are  supposed  to  happen  in 
this  great  city,  and  these  are,  perhaps, 
not  likely  to  be  the  most  popular;  but 
they  are  enough  to  show  again  what  Mr. 


Bunner  had  already  revealed  in  the  Story 
of  a  New  York  House  and  in  the  still  un- 
collected  Ballads  of  the  Town,  that  he  has 
a  knowledge  of  this  busy  city  possessed 
by  no  other  American  writer  of. fiction. 
It  is  knowledge  not  paraded  in  his  pages, 
but  it  permeates  certain  of  his  characters. 
Take  "The  Tenor,"  for  example.  In  that 
lively  story  the  young  girl,  seeking  out 
the  being  whom  she  has  worshipped  from 
afar,  rashly  ventures  into  the  hotel  where 
the  singer  and  his  wife  live.  She  goes 
as  a  servant,  and  she  has  a  chance  inter 
view  with  one  of  the  employees  of  the 
house — "  a  good-looking,  large  girl,  with 
red  hair  and  bright  cheeks."  This  young 
person  sees  the  name  "  Louise  Levy"  on 
the  heroine's  trunk.  "  You  don't  look 
like  a  sheeny,"  she  remarks  promptly. 
"Can't  tell  nothin' about  names,  can  you? 
My  name's  Slattery.  You'd  think  I  was 
Irish,  wouldn't  you  ?  Well,  I'm  straight 
Ne'  York.  I'd  be  dead  before  I  was  Irish. 
Born  here.  Ninth  Ward,  an'  next  to  an 
engine-house."  Could  anything  be  more 
intensely,  impressively,  essentially  Man 
hattan  than  this  little  vignette  framed  in 
the  doorway  of  a  hotel  ? 

There  are  those  who  choose  to  speak  of 


i  So 


Mr.  Bunner  as  a  humorist,  because  he  is 
the  editor  of  Puck.  He  is  a  humorist,  no 
doubt,  and  his  humor  will  endure,  for  it  is 
founded  on  observation  and  on  an  under 
standing  of  his  fellow-man.  But  he  is  a 
poet — as  a  true  humorist  must  be.  Per 
haps  his  best  story  is  "  Love  in  Old 
Clothes,"  in  which  the  humor  and  the 
poetry  are  inextricably  blended,  and  in 
which  there  is  a  pure  tenderness  of  touch 
I  cannot  but  call  exquisite.  And  yet,  per 
haps,  I  do  not  like  it  as  well  as  the  vigor 
ous  sketch  called  the  "  Zadoc  Pine  Labor 
Union."  This  is  an  object-lesson  in 
Americanism  ;  it  is  a  model  of  applied 
political  economy.  And  Zadoc  Pine  him 
self  is  one  of  the  most  direct  and  manly 
characters  who  has  stepped  from  real  life 
into  literature.  He  has  gumption  and  he 
has  grit;  he  is  an  American  as  Benjamin 
Franklin  was  an  American,  and  as  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  was.  He  could  think  as 
straight  as  he  could  shoot ;  and  the  tale 
of  his  rise  in  life  is  as  potent  a  plea  for 
freedom  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's. 

But  about  Mr.  Bunner's  writings  I  con 
fess  that  I  can  never  speak  with  the  ex 
pected  coldness  of  the  critic,  for  the  au 
thor  is  my  friend  for  now  many  years.  We 


have  dwelt  beneath  the  same  roof  for 
months  at  a  time.  We  have  exchanged 
counsel  day  and  night;  we  have  heard 
each  other's  plans  and  projects ;  we  have 
read  each  other's  manuscript;  we  have 
revised  each  other's  proof-sheets;  more 
than  once  we  have  written  the  same  story 
together,  he  holding  the  pen,  or  I,  as 
chance  would  have  it.  But  shall  friend 
ship  blind  me  to  the  quality  of  my  com 
rade's  art  ?  When  he  puts  forth  a  book, 
shall  I  pass  by  on  the  other  side,  silent, 
and  giving  no  sign?  That  may  be  the 
choice  of  some,  but  it  is  not  mine. 


HARPER'S 
AMERICAN     ESSAYISTS. 


AMERICANISMS  AND  BRITICISMS.with 
Other  Essays  on  Other  Isms.  By  BRANDER 
MATTHEWS.  With  Portrait.  i6mo,  Cloth, 
Ornamental,  $i  oo. 

FROM  THE  BOOKS  OF  LAURENCE 
HUTTON.  With  Portrait.  i6mo,  Cloth, 
Ornamental,  $i  oo. 

"Some  American  Book  Plates,"  "  Grangerism  and 
the  Grangerites,"  "The  Portraits  of  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots,"  "Portrait  Inscriptions,"  and  "Poetical  Inscrip 
tions  "and  Dedications"  are  the  topics  chosen  by  Mr. 
Hutton,  and  the  reader  gets  pleasure  even  as  he  gets 
culture  from  a  perusal  of  his  studies  in  these  fields. — 
Hartford  Courant. 

CONCERNING  ALL  OF  US.  By  THOMAS 
WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON.  With  Portrait. 
i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  oo. 

Colonel  Higginson  has  the  advantage  of  a  sound  and 
simple  philosophy  of  life  to  show  off  his  fine  literary 
culture.  The  one  makes  him  worth  reading — strong, 
open-minded,  and  wholesome  ;  the  other  gives  him  graces 
of  form,  style,  and  literary  attraction  in  great  variety. 
It  is  hard  to  decide  whether  the  charm  or  the  usefulness 
of  the  present  collection  of  essays  preponderates.— In 
dependent,  N.  Y. 

[OVER] 


Harper's  America*  Essayists. 


FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.  By  GEORGE 
WILLIAM  CURTIS.  With  Portrait.  i6mo, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  oo. 

The  essays  have  lost  nothing  of  their  actuality ;  their 
freshness  of  humor ;  their  contagion  of  cheerful  philoso 
phy  ;  their  breathing,  historical  interest ;  their  wit,  that 
fits  like  a  cap  on  Wisdom's  head;  their  tenderness  of 
humanity. — Philadelphia  Ledger. 

AS    WE    WERE    SAYING.     By   CHARLES 
DUDLEY  WARNER.     With  Portrait,  and  Il 
lustrated  by  H.  W.  McViCKAR  and  Others. 
i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  oo. 
Mr.   Warner   possesses   the   faculty   of    putting   his 
thoughts  into  excellent  English,  while  the  simplicity  of 
his  style,  the  absence  of  all  straining  after  effect,  and  the 
apparently  spontaneous  character  of  his  wit,  sufficiently 
account  for  the  high  reputation  he   enjoys  among  the 
American  humorists. — Episcopal  Recorder,  Philadelphia. 

CRITICISM  AND  FICTION.    By  WILLIAM 
DEAN    HOWELLS.     With    Portrait.     i6mo, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  oo. 
Many  a  good  thing  and  many  a  true  thing  is  here 

clothed  in  the  diction  of  a  master,  and  giving  forth  the 

bouquet  of  a  style  as  delicately  vigorous,  so  to  say,  as  any 

in  English  literature.— Independent,  N.  Y. 


Published  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  New  York. 

JH3P"  The  foregoing  works  are  for  sale  by  all  booksellers 
or  "will  be  sent  by  the  publishers,  postage  prepaid,  to  any 
part  of  the  United  States,  Canada,  or  Mexico,  on  receipt 
of  the  price. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


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LIBRARY  USE 


JUL  1 2  1956 


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GENERAL  LIBRARY  -U.C.  BERKELEY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


